Spaceship Graveyard

The satellites work with us to predict climate changes, incoming asteroids, understanding space in depth and many more. The satellites wear out and expire after a period of time as every machine we use in our routine life does. When a satellite becomes decommissioned, it should be detached from the orbits for accommodation of future satellites. But How do people dispose a satellite in space? How the space junk affects space and earth? 

First of all we need to know about Why do we need to dispose a decommissioned satellite? 

If satellites were left in the orbit after being decommissioned, then they would constitute a hazard to future launches as they wander across the sky. 

The Destination of Death:

The satellites revolve in particular orbits around the earth. 

An orbit is a regular, repeating path that a satellite in space takes around. Each satellite revolves on particular orbits. The lowest Earth orbit, LEO is in the first 100 to 200 miles of space. LEO is one of the easiest orbit to get to and stay in. 

The process of disposal of decommissioned satellite is based on the orbit it revolves.

For a satellite in the nearby and smaller orbital are disposed quite easily. The satellite is made to fall into earth atmosphere. As it runs through the atmosphere at thousands of miles per hour, the friction in air burns up the satellite and the satellite vanishes before it reaches down the ground. 

For satellites bigger in size, these might not entirely burn up before contacting the ground. So the satellites are disposed in a destination, which ensures that debris will not fall into inhabited area. 

The destination used currently for dumping space junk is located in southern Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand. It is also known as Point Nemo.

Point Nemo sits between Australia, South America and New Zealand at some extent of 1,600 miles from land.

Nobody lives near it, and it's not got much wildlife, making it the perfect dumping ground for satellites, spacecraft and other space junks. 

How does decommissioned satellites in the higher orbital are disposed? 

These satellites are sent into the graveyard orbit. This is almost 22,400 miles away from the earth.

How these process affects our ecosystem? 

As the spacecraft or satellite are most commonly made of aluminum and it's alloys, it even takes hundreds of years to decompose. By this way, it causes air and marine pollution as they burn when they fall into atmosphere. 

The marine pollution in point Nemo has reduced the population of sea animals in and around the location. 

As the satellites are leftover in graveyard orbits, in future it may be troublesome and have to even send an space garbage truck to collect a the debris. 

Ray of light in darkness 

As space pollution and environmental pollution became an major concern, many international agencies had came forward to evolve an futuristic space craft, which reduces space junk and development of machines to collect the space waste 

Saber Astronautics in Sydney is building the technology to rid space of debris. 

The European Space Agency (ESA) is working to develop and implement vessels capable of capturing space waste. 

We should have come across the name Elon Musk in recent times and his organization SpaceX.

SpaceX remain as one of the private space transportation service providers, which have been launching Satellites of NASA and many more to space. 

It follows a solitary method in space transportation, In 2010, it has launched a spacecraft (Dragon) with satellite to orbit of earth and recovered the spacecraft by landing on ground and used the spacecraft for future launches. 

This reduced the debris on the space to some extent and also on earth.(but the main reason for recovery of spacecraft was for economical purpose.) 

Let's expect this as a Great initiative and keep our earth and space clean with our future discoveries.