Space debris - a journey to Earth

Space debris - a journey to Earth takes the audience on a journey from the outer solar system back to our home planet. The objects encountered along the way are manmade. Originally designed to explore the universe, these are now a challenge for modern space flight. An estimated number of 700,000 objects larger than 1 cm and 170 million objects larger than 1mm are expected to reside in Earth orbits.

The video gives a closer look at the different regions used for space flight and explains how mitigation and removal measures could preserve future usage of these orbits.

Produced for the 7th European Conference on Space Debris, 18-21 April 2017.

[paranoidx]

Alien: Wow these aliens have an amazing defense system with multiple layering shielding.
Human: Well, this is embarrassing. We just cannot fund the initiative to clean up.

[davidamaral]

"No spacecraft were harmed in the making of this film"

[kcirrednosrednad]

cool. earth has its own ring system. take that Saturn.

[CodeLeeCarter]

Personally, the ones that receive a deorbit burn should be brought all the way down, instead, we have them orbiting for anything from a year upto 200 years prior to hitting the atmosphere, or designate a scrapyard up there or on the moon, so in the future we can use the metals etc that's been sent up over the history of space flight.

Either way, we need to do more when it concerns space junk and I'm all for bringing awareness to the problem, Thank you

[edwealleans]

We're a messy bunch us humans.

Nicely animated and informative though :)

[erkanen]

I love the animation of the Lagrange point of earth in this video. There are so many bad attempts at explaining orbital dynamics through videos; poor resolutions, bad perspectives and out-of-scale and -reference motion patterns etc. This was very simple and intuitive both in terms of motion and explaining the gravity well. Great job, ESA!

[esaintouch]

Great to see something being done about this issue! It is in everyone's responsibility to clean after themselves!

[saintclic]

wow!!! school kids all over the Earth must view this so they can still LOVE looking up to the sky day an night knowing it shall never bee this bad do too the actions of those who now are putting 'stuff' in there/our SPACE our

[varunahlawat]

Superb work, it made a good picture of the current scenario. And how creative this was to bring from farthest to closest, I absolutely loved it.

[HenryFalkner]

Some of her commentary is drowned out by the music.

[steph]

especially, I like that official ESA still respects Pluto as a fully-valued planet. Thanks, ESA!!

[pmadden]

Please do something about the background "music" that drowns out the commentary. This is an important video; don't waste it.

[elektronkim]

Thanks for being honest about this mess.

Some space garbage truck controller jobs in the future space debris industry seems interesting to me. Maybe we are about to learn what gravity really is and can have those new personal Earth surface hover boards pay for the mistakes of the past.

[danm]

It should've also been noted that at around 400km, there is a very minuet amount of drag, like tiny. That is why the ISS has to perform some boost burns a few times per year. So many objects in LEO decay naturally.

[MrLM]

Don't get me wrong - a bit music is very nice, but its a bit too loud in this case :/ - very interesting though :D

[TheSeppentoni]

Nice Vid! But why always this superficial overly dramatic music these days?

[LittleLightUwU]

8:40 at this point my eyes wehere like this O.O   you guys are awsome :-D

[jamiegodman]

All of these countermeasures are indirect ESA. They are great for mitigating additional space debris. However, we need a much more hands on direct meathod for removal of existing space debris. If the worlds space agencies stop leaving upperstages and dead sats in orbit, along with active removal of space junk we will hopefully clean up Earth orbit.

[DianaHerberg]

3:20 if you just want to see the clutter

[Kumar]

Background music is so high that it's difficult to understand what she's actually saying.