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Lost in Space

Natural History, March, 2001 by Richard Panek

What goes up must come down. Or not.

Every sky watcher knows that whats up in our nighttime skies isn't up at all. Celestial objects may look as though they're "up there" to observers "down here" on Earth, but we long ago adjusted our thinking and accepted that they're simply moving across the vast reaches of empty space, where directions like up and down have no meaning. And for the most part, that's true.

The exception is what we ourselves have sent up--for example, the International Space Station (ISS), now under construction in orbit. But artificial satellites such as the ISS won't stay up there forever, and one reminder of this basic fact of physics is the impending return of the Mir spacecraft to our blue planet.

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If all goes according to plan (never a safe bet when it comes to space missions), Mir should be reentering Earth's atmosphere between February 26 and 28, or about a week after this issue of Natural History comes off the presses. Much of Mir should disintegrate on reentry; any remaining pieces should land in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Australia. That crash-and-burn will reduce the number of man-made objects in the heavens by one, but the total will still be nearly 8,000, and growing almost daily.

About 2,500 of those objects are genuine satellites--spacecraft specifically designed to orbit Earth. As for the other 5,000 or so out there, they're the celestial equivalent of roadside trash: hatch covers, rocket bodies, bits and pieces of payloads that have disintegrated or (at the rate of about six a year) unexpectedly exploded, even a glove that a Gemini astronaut lost back in the 1960s. And then there's the celestial equivalent of a roadside attraction: a one-third-sized working model of the Sputnik 1 satellite, released by Mir cosmonauts in 1997 on the fortieth anniversary of the launch that initiated the space age.

Is anybody keeping track of all this stuff? Fortunately, yes: the U.S. Space Command's Space Control Center (SCC) near Colorado Springs, Colorado. The SCC continuously monitors the location of each object, not only to distinguish between friend and foe, but to facilitate navigation by determining what could potentially be in the way. When the bankrupt global satellite telephone company Iridium LLC needed to think about dumping its sixty-six satellites last year, it asked the SCC for guidance in steering its suddenly useless inventory safely to oblivion. (The Pentagon later decided to keep the satellites aloft for at least two more years.)

Many of us who were alive in the 1960s have memories of standing outside at night, straining for a glimpse of Telstar or some other primitive satellite as it slowly traveled across the backdrop of the so-called fixed stars. Whatever romantic visions of space exploration were inspired by that sight have long ago receded into collective nostalgia. But sky watchers can still get some kind of existential thrill from locating celestial objects that, unlike the Moon, planets, and stars, will probably vanish from the universe before they do.

Only a small proportion of orbiting objects are visible through even the most powerful backyard telescopes, but the recent addition of the ISS to the night sky now gives naked-eye observers something to see. It can reach the brightness of a first-magnitude star if it catches the light of the Sun just right. As the station itself grows, that radiance will also grow. To find out precisely when and in what part of the sky the space station is visible, you can visit spaceflight.nasa .gov/realdata/sightings/, which links to sighting opportunities for more than 200 locations worldwide.

As for Mir, it may be going but it's not gone yet. And until it is, you can determine the spacecraft's availability and visibility by checking a Web site established by Sky O Telescope magazine at www.skypub.com/sights/satellites/ mir.shtml.

And then there's the Gemini glove. No, you can't see it, but surely it, too, deserves a dedicated Web site to inform us of its whereabouts. Forget the beeping Sputnik 1 model. That glove is a more touching monument to the space age--a humble reminder that at any time, and despite all our technological wizardry, our reach can still exceed our grasp.

Richard Panek is author of Seeing and Believing: How the Telescope Opened Our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens (Penguin, 1999).

Lost in Space

Natural History, March, 2001 by Richard Panek

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