North Korea rocket breaks up after much-touted launch

 

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Failure is an option for North Korea satellite ... then what?

By James Oberg NBC News space analyst

Special to MSNBC

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Officially, we now are only hours from North Korea's launch of its Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite. The first of four reserved daily launch windows has already passed, with three to go until Monday.

Celebrations are already planned that involve a successful mission. The radio beacon is to transmit hymns in honor of the country’s ruling dynasty. Foreign displeasure of the demonstration of rocket prowess will be ignored.
All that is planned — if the launch works. But what if it doesn’t? What if the Earth-observing  satellite goes the way its two predecessors apparently did — into the ocean, as scorched shrapnel,  following a launch failure?
This is worth serious consideration, since the things I’ve seen and assessed during our amazing insider tour of the North Korean space program have made me a lot more worried about the likelihood of this launch succeeding.
Kinds of failures A lot will depend on just how and when the failure occurs.
In the first moments of flight, as the rocket lifts off the pad at the new Sohae launch base , it could explode, as early rockets in many other countries did.
But this may not be as easily detectable as it seems, especially if the video transmission from the launch site has been tape-delayed in prudent anticipation of exactly such a possibility. In that case, "no news" is all the news there will be, until a later announcement that the launch has been "indefinitely postponed."

Local residents north of the base — and we saw lots of villages there — would notice the explosion, but might not even connect it with a rocket. And rumors would be unlikely to spread very fast in such a tightly controlled society.
After a minute or so of flight, the rocket will be high in the skies over the western half of the country, including the capital, Pyongyang. Any "energetic event" (NASA’s favorite euphemism for a bad-ass explosion) could streak the sky with a burst of flame — but no sound.
Lots of people would see it, and some foreign visitors might even get a picture. But these photographs and videos would be recognized for what they showed only if the launch was announced within a minute of liftoff.
These possibilities underscore the importance of the North Koreans announcing the launch time in advance, and broadcasting the launch video with minimum delay — or all their vaunted "transparency" involved with the unprecedented press tour evaporates.
Out of sight, out of luck Another opportunity for failure would come after a well-publicized liftoff, after the vehicle vanishes over the southern horizon. The critical third-stage burn, which apparently involves a fairly sophisticated sideways jog to slip into the proper final orbit, may be too far away for in-country tracking sites to receive signals. So instead they have to wait.
The wait could be excruciating, because the satellite’s orbit does not pass within radio range of North Korea for 11 hours. This is a real situation — I’ve checked the orbital flight path myself — and it’s caused by the steep polar orbit of the vehicle.
During all this time, officials say, the satellite will be transmitting patriotic hymns on a 470MHz  beacon. Foreign radio listeners will try to pick it up, and if the satellite reaches orbit, it’s almost certain that some — perhaps very, very many — will do so before the first official North Korean reception.
If nobody hears the satellite’s beacon in those hours, something clearly will have gone wrong.
Observers also need to be cautious about inevitable rumors and "false positives" — possible confirmatory signals picked up briefly or weakly, that actually originated with our unrelated transmitters. This happens often enough to mislead observers to eager to find and trumpet a "first signal," so we need to be cautious. More >>

The Family Gagarin Left Behind

Photo: Allen Abel

Air & Space magazine/ By Allen Abel

They are his daughters and his widow, his nieces and cousins, his space-going peers, his former rivals, millions of us who knew him only from black-and-white newsreels as the first man in space, and a dwindling few who remember first-hand how far he had to rise to reach the stars.

It was April 12, 1961, when a dreamy boy born to poverty and flames on the Eastern Front of the Second World War flew weightless for nearly two hours in a capsule called Vostok—“the East.” Barely seven years later, when he was 34 years old, the spacefaring hero with the famous, easy smile was killed in a crash of his own MiG-15UTI jet, his hand still on the joystick when he and his instructor copilot hit the trees. He is one of history’s bravest and most tragic adventurers.

I am searching for the father and husband and friend behind the chiseled face on a statue or gleaming idol on a coin. But his elder daughter seems more comfortable discussing his public persona, calling his flight “one of the main achievements that took place over the last 100 years, not only for this country but for mankind.”

1968

She is telling me this in an office above one of the world’s great treasuries, the exhibition halls of the Moscow Kremlin, where czarist—and later, Communist—power presided over centuries of serfdom, socialism, and sacrifice. Elena Yurievna Gagarina was two years and two days old when her father lifted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, and not quite 10 when he died. Today, she is the director of the Kremlin State Museum, where she is the guardian of imperial robes, royal carriages, and Fabergé eggs.

It is difficult to imagine a more elegant workplace, or a more elegant woman. When Barack and Michelle Obama visited Moscow in 2009, it was Elena who escorted the First Lady through the galleries. Fluent in English, she is the custodian not only of Russia’s royal jewels but also of every Yuri Gagarin statue, every postal tribute, and every published encomium. All must pass her personal inspection.

“There are good sculptures and bad sculptures, good stamps and bad stamps,” she says. “This is the role which is given to me by law: that all images of my father and stories of his life I should see.” Fine art, she says, is all that ever attracted her, even as her father was reaching for—and falling from—the heights of space exploration and fame. “Each of us in our family followed a different path,” she says. “My mother was a doctor, my sister an economist. Our parents wanted us to follow our own interests.”

Elena worked her way up to become the curator of 18th century English drawings and engravings at Moscow’s Pushkin Museum. (Her only child, a daughter, works at the Kremlin with her.) It is natural to wonder whether someone named, say, Kuznetsova—the Russian “Smith”—would have risen as high as Yuri Gagarin’s daughter. But Elena waves off this petty conjecture. “I never used my name for my career,” she says. “My field of interest is very different from anything connected with space travel. I always wanted to be an art historian from the earliest age. But still, of course, people know my name. Everyone has a story about my father. Everyone has a story to tell about the 12th of April.”

Elena herself doesn’t remember much of that day. “When my father went into space, I don’t think that at that period I understood it quite well,” she says. “I was too young. All the people I encountered every day—our friends, our neighbors—were connected with the space project.”

No one at the time knew much about the engineering challenges of spaceflight. “The cosmonauts understood that it was 50-50 if the flight would be successful or not. The general consensus was that it was safe. But Father had complete trust in the chief designer [Sergei Korolev]. Korolev loved him very much.”

The second daughter, Galina Yurievna Gagarina, was 36 days old when her father flew. “When I was a child, I lived as every child does,” she says. “We hadn’t any special teacher or special school or special conditions of life. Our city—Star City—was a very special place. From the very beginning, I knew that. But for us, it was normal. At school, I studied with many different children. Not all were the children of cosmonauts.”

By the time Galina reached fourth grade, American astronauts were on the moon. If the Gagarina girls had been unique as infants, their celebrity no longer was so singular. A lot of the dads at Star City had gone into space.

We are in Galina’s office at Plekhanov University in Moscow, where she has been a professor of economics for 25 years. Galina, who is married to a pediatrician from the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia’s far east, has one child: a boy, now 17, named Yuri. Like her sister, she is fluent in English.  More >>

Gagarin’s Flight Record Falsified

discoverynews.com/ By Amy Shira Teitel

On April 12, 1961, the world met Yuri Gagarin, a former Soviet Air Force pilot who shot from obscurity to international fame after making one full orbit around the Earth in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.

But the mission records the Soviet Union submitted to international authorities to secure Gagarin's place as the first man in space present a very different mission. Specifically, his landing was deliberately falsified. During the year, lies about the Vostok landing system called into question whether or not Vostok 1 deserved its place as history's first spaceflight at all.

In 1905, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI, known as the International Air Sports Federation in English) was established to manage and maintain all records of accomplishments in aviation. By the 1950s, the FAI had grown to include aeronautic and astronautic categories under its umbrella. With spaceflight on the horizon, the organization established a set of guidelines for what constitutes a spaceflight -- if two nations were going to vie for the record of first in space, the FAI should have clear rules to determine a winner.

The terms of spaceflight reflected the organization's roots in aviation. For a flight to count, the pilot-astronaut or pilot-cosmonaut would have to land with his spacecraft. After all, if a pilot fails to land  with his aircraft, it's usually because something has gone wrong and the flight has been a failure. Why should spaceflight be any different?

The Soviet Union statement presented to the FAI stated  that the cosmonaut had landed inside Vostok 1 as per the organization's guidelines on spaceflight. Signed by the sports commissar of the USSR, the document asserts that "at 10:55 a.m. Moscow time on the 12th of April 1961 ... the pilot-cosmonaut Yuri Alexeyvich Gagarin landed with the 'Vostok' spaceship."

He hadn't. He couldn't have even if he'd wanted to.

The Vostok spacecraft was basic and unsophisticated and lacked a braking system. Gagarin did as he was trained to do: He ejected during the final phase of his descent. He and Vostok 1 touched down separately by parachutes.

ANALYSIS: Vladimir Komarov: The Unsung Space Hero

Gagarin's landing was much scarier than the innocuous one described in the FAI's formal record. Vostok 1 fired its retrorockets and began its fall through the atmosphere, but the cables connecting the crew module with the instrument unit failed to separate. The latter heavier unit fell first, exposing Vostok's fragile hatch to the fiery phase of reentry. Only after the cables burned away did Vostok reorient itself with its heat shield down. Its parachute deployed late, and when Gagarin ejected 23,000 feet above the ground, his own 'chute deployed late as well. He landed 10 minutes after and miles away from his spacecraft in the Saratova region near the border of Kazakhstan.

Farmers who saw the cosmonaut fall from the sky didn't know what to make of the man in the orange suit and helmet. A woman and her daughter reportedly reached Gagarin first; when she asked if he came from space, he confidently said that he had before asking to use a phone to call the Soviet Space Agency.

But the FAI accepted the Soviet-issued statement on the flight. At least, it did until Gherman Titov followed Gagarin into orbit four months later.

Titov, who had been Gagarin's backup for Vostok 1, spent a little over 25 hours in orbit before returning to Earth on Aug. 7, 1961. His landing was similarly veiled when the flight record was presented to the FAI, this time seeking to secure a duration record for the Soviet Union. It states that "pilot-cosmonaut Gherman Stepanovich TITOV and the spaceship 'Vostok 2 ... landed in the vicinity of the village of Krasny Koot." While the official record is ambiguous, the cosmonaut made no secret of his landing. He publicly admitted to ejecting before touching down by a personal parachute.

NEWS: Gagarin's Final Words: Is Sausage Packed?

Titov's admission called Gagarin's landing, and consequently his record as the first man in space, into question. If Gagarin and Titov both ejected before landing, the Soviet Union would lose its spot in history as the first nation to launch a man into space.

Controversy began to brew and the FAI held a special meeting of delegates to reexamine Titov's records and reconsider Gagarin's. The result of the meeting was a change to the parameters that defined spaceflight rather than a change to the records. The parameters switched to focus on the payload launched; this technical achievement mattered more than how the astronaut or cosmonaut landed. That Gagarin had orbited the Earth was the real achievement, and both his and Titov's records remain in the FAI's books.

Gagarin's true landing and the technical problems that very nearly killed him during his descent weren't publicized until 1971, three years after he died in a plane crash in 1968. The FAI posthumously honored Gagarin that year by established the Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal to recognize the achievements of space pilots in man's ongoing conquest in this new realm.

After the decision to keep Gagarin's record intact, the early Vostok landing system went from a controversial issue to a historical oddity of the transition from flight in aircraft to spaceflight in capsules.

Satellite spies on North Korea's countdown to launch

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Apollo 11’s Engines Found in Atlantic

By Ian O'Neill

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and founder of the private spaceflight company Blue Origin, has announced that he's located the F-1 engines that launched Apollo 11 to the moon.

In the privately funded venture, Bezos' team used state-of-the-art deep sea sonar to hunt for the space artifacts that have sat 14,000 feet (4.2 kilometers) under the Atlantic Ocean for over 40 years.  Read >>

Man jumps from the edge of space

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Raro video del desastre del transbordador Challenger

Mining the moon: Canada's possible new role in space

disclose.tv

By: Peter Rakobowchuk, The Canadian Press

Canada could play a key role in a new international space race, with the next sprint to the moon gearing up as an extra-terrestrial gold rush.

Industry insiders will be watching closely this week as the heads of the world's five biggest space agencies get together in Quebec City, where the partners on the International Space Station will discuss more than just the future of the orbiting lab.

They will also address an idea gaining currency in business and scientific circles: that within human reach lies an unfathomable wealth of resources, some of them common on Earth and others so exotic that they could change the way we live.

Canada could figure prominently in any discussion about lunar exploration, with nearly one-quarter of the world's top mining companies headquartered here and this country also known for robotics like the famous Canadarm.

Several countries, including China, have expressed a desire to start mining the moon's resources. The mining industry is now waiting for the Canadian Space Agency to make its intentions known, while the agency awaits direction from the federal government.

"When members of the international space community decide to go to the Moon or Mars, the CSA and Canada will be ready to contribute," the agency told The Canadian Press in an email last week.

The CSA has already begun developing a number of prototype lunar rovers, in co-operation with NASA and several Canadian firms.

The testing of these prototypes on Earth, with special drills for excavating, has already begun and more tests are planned this summer in Hawaii. The next phase would involve building space-bound rovers -- but the CSA can't move forward without federal approval.

"They're not headed for the moon, yet, although we have hopes for sure," Iain Christie, the president of Neptec Design Group, maker of one of the excavation rovers, said in an interview.

"We're making, I think, a contribution to what Canada's future space program might look like."

Ottawa-based Neptec made the laser-camera system that was used to inspect for damage on the exterior of the recently retired U.S. space shuttles.

For Christie, Canada's post-shuttle vocation is a no-brainer.

Of the top 40 global mining companies, with combined assets approaching $1 trillion, nine are Canadian, according to a 2011 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. More >>

Conspiracy-Did a U.S. Radar Research Station Disable Russia's Phobos Probe?

Scientific American/ By Jim Nash

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HF ANTENNA ARRAY: A retired commander of Russia's ballistic missile early warning system implied that the U.S.'s High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) observatory in Alaska interfered with the Mars-bound Phobos-Grunt probe. HAARP is often a target of conspiracy theorists. Image: Courtesy of the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP)

After 19 attempts over 51 years, Russia has yet to chalk up a fully successful mission to Mars. That includes its ambitious Phobos–Grunt probe, launched November 8 from Kazakhstan and now stranded in low Earth orbit. Unable to regain control of the spacecraft, the Russians now expect it to fall back to Earth around January 9.

Responding to shame over the nation's Mars program, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has threatened to criminally prosecute those responsible if possible. Soon after Medvedev's comments, a former high-ranking Russian officer found a more convenient scapegoat in a remote Alaskan radar facility. But an analysis of the timing and physics involved shows that there is little basis for the claim.

Phobos–Grunt was to retrieve soil ("grunt" in Russian) from the Martian moon Phobos and return it to Earth for study. But the rocket engine intended to boost the spacecraft into a higher orbit failed. The probe itself has since communicated only sporadically with ground stations, and even then it has murmured only unintelligible noise.

To Lt. Gen. Nikolay Rodionov, a retired commander of Russia's ballistic missile early warning system, U.S. technology could have caused the rocket malfunction. In a November 24 interview with the Russian news agency Interfax, Rodionov said "powerful American radars" in Alaska "could have influenced the control systems of our interplanetary rover."

Rodionov was quoted saying the U.S. wants to use the ionosphere as part of its missile defense, although he did not elaborate. A subsequent article in India's The Hindu expanded on Rodionov's statement, indicating that he was likely referring to the U.S.'s High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) observatory established in 1993.

NASA Launches Super-size Rover to Mars

China termina con éxito la misión de la nave espacial Shenzhou-8

Microsiervos

La Shenzhou-8 tras el aterrizaje

Con el retorno en perfectas condiciones de la cápsula de la tripulación de la Shenzhou-8 el programa espacial chino ha completado con éxito su primera misión destinada a establecer una estación espacial propia.

En este caso la Shenzhou-8 realizó dos acoplamientos automáticos con el módulo Tiangong 1, Palacio en el paraíso en español, al que permaneció atracada un total de dos semanas, antes de partir de vuelta a Tierra con los maniquíes de astronautas que llevaba a bordo como tripulantes.

El éxito de esta misión deja abierto el camino para que el 2012 China pueda lanzar las dos misiones tripuladas que tiene planeadas en las Shenzhou-9 y 10 .

El Tiangong 1, lanzado en septiembre de este mismo año, es un módulo relativamente pequeño, en especial si lo comparamos con la Estación Espacial Internacional, con un diámetro máximo de 3,35 metros, una longitud es de 9 metros, un peso de 8,5 toneladas, y espacio para dos tripulantes.

Pero es sólo el primer paso de los planes chinos para construir una estación mayor, pues el Tiangong-1 será sustituida por el Tiangong 2, y más tarde por el Tiangong 3, aunque el objetivo final de China es poner una estación espacial en órbita, lo que podría comenzar a suceder a partir de 2020.

No se conocen todos los detalles, ni mucho menos, aparte de que están sujetos a cambios, pero se habla de que podría constar de un módulo central de un peso de unas 20 toneladas al que se acoplarían otros dos módulos especializados.

Como siempre, Daniel Marín tiene un montón de información extremadamente detallada al respecto en Completada la misión Shenzhou-8.

• China consigue el primer acoplamiento espacial de su historia y China completa el segundo acoplamiento de su programa espacial, dos hitos importantes de esta misión.

Russian Mars Probe Will Likely Come Crashing Back to Earth

wired.com/ By Adam Mann

Things are looking grim for the Russian space agency’s Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars, with experts in the space industry calling the probability of rescue nearly zero.

The spacecraft has been stranded in low-Earth orbit following an engine failure almost immediately after launch on Nov. 8. Efforts to contact the probe have proved futile and the Pentagon’s NORAD has reportedly projected that the vehicle will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere on Nov. 26, the day after NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory is scheduled to launch. (Wired was unable to confirm this date with NORAD due to the federal holiday.)

It was hoped that Phobos-Grunt would be the first fully successful Russian mission to the Red Planet after a 50-year-long string of failures. It was set to land on Mars’ moon Phobos and return a soil sample from its surface.

The spacecraft is currently in a decaying orbit around Earth that should allow it to remain in space for at least a few weeks. During this time, Russian engineers will continue trying to contact the probe, hoping for a miracle.

In the event that no contact is established, the probe will soon fall back to Earth. The probable fall zone is currently very large — between 51.4 degrees N latitude and 51.4 degrees S latitude, which includes most of the U.S., part of Europe, all of Africa and Australia and virtually all of South America and Asia — and could prove dangerous if the spacecraft were to come down over a populated area.

While most of the 15-ton vehicle is expected to burn up in the atmosphere, its size and mass suggests that some debris would reach the Earth’s surface.

Image: Roscosmos/IKI

Genetically Altered Astronaut Poo? NASA Wants to Know

Discovery News
Has bacteria in astronaut poop left on the moon been genetically altered? Did solar wind and ultraviolet radiation destroy the flag at Tranquility Base, landing site for the first Apollo moon mission? Are the lunar rovers dented with micrometeoroid impacts?
These are among the science questions raised by a NASA team tasked to come up with guidelines to preserve lunar artifacts before contenders in a $30-million competition sponsored by Google arrive on the moon beginning in about two years.
About 28 teams are competing to send privately funded robotic spacecraft to photograph and explore the lunar surface. Winners can get bonuses if they visit lunar historic sites, a prospect that got NASA thinking about its property on the moon.
PHOTOS: Myths of the Moon Missions
Six crews landed on lunar surface between 1969 and 1972, leaving behind descent modules, communications antennas, rovers and yes, even bags with feces. The Apollo artifacts are part of a larger collection of relics that also include Soviet-era spacecraft and crashed NASA probes.
More >

Paisajes de Marte a través de los ojos de un robot

Una aurora austral vista desde la Soyuz 2

Me encontré esta alucinante foto en un tuit de @Astro_Ron, Ron Garan, aunque en realidad es una foto que tomó Mike Fossum, @Astro_Aggie.
El original está en The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth, de donde se puede descargar a 4.256×2.832 puntos.

'Heavenly' Chinese space module blasts off

Around the World in 90 Minutes [Documentary]

Top Documentary Films

At midnight, travel to the tiny country of Monaco and watch residents riding on a gondola on a beautiful summer night.

By 12:05 a.m. you are transported to Canada to watch a gaggle of geese forage for food on a grassy knoll. Seem impossible? Not when the photographs are provided by the International Space Station as it orbits the Earth.

Around the World in 90 Minutes tells the spectacular story of what happens around the globe during one 90-minute voyage through a series of high definition images broadcast from thousands of miles away.

Lluvia de basura espacial: diez peores casos

RRD Mundo

20 de febrero de 2008, Estados Unidos:La Armada de ese país interceptó su satélite espía USA-193 -ya en desuso-, dejando una estela de desechos. Astrónomos amateurs reportaron que parte de ese material cayó en el noroeste de EE UU y Canadá. Aseguraron que los restos recogidos no eran más grandes que un balón de fútbol.

Continuar leyendo >

I hope doesn't hit my head: NASA gives 1-hour window for satellite collision with Earth

• FILE - In this file image provided by NASA this is the STS-48 onboard photo of the …

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A 6-ton NASA satellite on a collision course with Earth clung to space Friday, apparently flipping position in its ever-lower orbit and stalling its death plunge.
The old research spacecraft was targeted to crash through the atmosphere sometime Friday night or early Saturday, putting Canada and Africa in the potential crosshairs, although most of the satellite should burn up during re-entry. The United States wasn't entirely out of the woods; the possible strike zone skirted Washington state.
"It just doesn't want to come down," said Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
McDowell said the satellite's delayed demise demonstrates how unreliable predictions can be. That said, "the best guess is that it will still splash in the ocean, just because there's more ocean out there."
Until Friday, increased solar activity was causing the atmosphere to expand and the 35-foot, bus-size satellite to free fall more quickly. But late Friday morning, NASA said the sun was no longer the major factor in the rate of descent and that the satellite's position, shape or both had changed by the time it slipped down to a 100-mile orbit.
"In the last 24 hours, something has happened to the spacecraft," said NASA orbital debris scientist Mark Matney.
On Friday night, NASA said it expected the satellite to come crashing down between 11:45 p.m. and 12:45 a.m. EDT Saturday. It was going to be passing over the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans at that time, as well as Canada and Africa.
"The risk to public safety is very remote," NASA said in a statement.
Any surviving wreckage is expected to be limited to a 500-mile swath.
The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, will be the biggest NASA spacecraft to crash back to Earth, uncontrolled, since the post-Apollo 75-ton Skylab space station and the more than 10-ton Pegasus 2 satellite, both in 1979.
Russia's 135-ton Mir space station slammed through the atmosphere in 2001, but it was a controlled dive into the Pacific.
Some 26 pieces of the UARS satellite — representing 1,200 pounds of heavy metal — are expected to rain down somewhere. The biggest surviving chunk should be no more than 300 pounds (136 kilograms).
Earthlings can take comfort in the fact that no one has ever been hurt by falling space junk — to anyone's knowledge — and there has been no serious property damage. NASA put the chances that somebody somewhere on Earth would get hurt at 1-in-3,200. But any one person's odds of being struck were estimated at 1-in-22 trillion, given there are 7 billion people on the planet.
"Keep in mind that we have bits of debris re-entering the atmosphere every single day," Matney said in brief remarks broadcast on NASA TV.
In any case, finders definitely aren't keepers.
Any surviving wreckage belongs to NASA, and it is against the law to keep or sell even the smallest piece. There are no toxic chemicals on board, but sharp edges could be dangerous, so the space agency is warning the public to keep hands off and call police.
The $740 million UARS was launched in 1991 from space shuttle Discovery to study the atmosphere and the ozone layer. At the time, the rules weren't as firm for safe satellite disposal; now a spacecraft must be built to burn up upon re-entry or have a motor to propel it into a much higher, long-term orbit.
NASA shut UARS down in 2005 after lowering its orbit to hurry its end. A potential satellite-retrieval mission was ruled out following the 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster, and NASA did not want the satellite hanging around orbit posing a debris hazard.
Space junk is a growing problem in low-Earth orbit. More than 20,000 pieces of debris, at least 4 inches in diameter, are being tracked on a daily basis. These objects pose a serious threat to the International Space Station.