Thus, ‘derelict objects’ is a more appropriate word to qualify them and they can be classified into three groups: Unfortunately, as of today, there is no other viable option to guarantee mission success and there are no means to retrieve them. For instance, the Apollo astronauts couldn’t clean up the ALSEP sites and bring back home all the packaging (see picture above): if they had done so it would have been at the expense of the precious lunar rocks and their very short time on the surface doing science. Access to Space Agencies databases to fetch detailed information about actual flight hardware, exact deployment sequences and other critical information to help establish more accurate listings.ĭON’T call these relics ‘space junk’! Mass and space exploration are not compatible: a spacecraft can’t afford trailing unnecessary load, so items that are no more useful at one point into the mission become dead weight and must be shaved off quickly.Untold or unknown events such as classified missions and experiments, private belongings secretly left on the moon by the Apollo astronauts, family items hidden into space hardware by mission staff and technicians, or Apollo hardware unofficially returned to Earth as souvenirs by the astronauts.The number of objects that emerge from deployments and separation of spacecraft (explosive bolts, lens caps, dust covers, clamp bands, fairings, shrouds, etc.). The number of debris resulting from impacts, collisions and spent stage breakups, provided those events will ever be known.(see the Apollo 15’s rover in the picture above) How objects are numbered, for instance a complex Apollo rover may be counted as one object or split into its detachable elements: antennas, camera, batteries, seats, console, hand tools carrier, fenders, etc.The exact number of artificial objects in outer space will never be known.
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