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Managing manmade clutter in space.
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The space station is the most heavily protected vehicle that's
ever been launched or assembled in Earth orbit.
It can withstand hits of objects on the order
of half an inch in diameter.
If it's larger than that,
the shield simply cannot prevent the particle
from going all the way through the shields
and into the component that we're trying to protect.
If the objects are larger, we simply get out of the way.
A lot of people think that all debris moves
in a sort of general direction.
But it turns out that once they're in orbit
because of perturbations,
changes in the gravitational field of the Earth
and of the sun and the moon, that they actually wind
up in a large number of directions.
The best way to visualize it is to think of a beehive,
an angry beehive, and these objects are actually going
in all different directions.
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Be sure to tell your teacher
to visit the NASA Explorer Schools Virtual Campus.
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