The growing sphere of space junk surrounding the Earth is a hazard to spaceflight, as International Space Station astronauts found out Thursday when their home was buzzed by a five-inch piece of debris.
How to Track Space Junk Online
As the story about the near miss was unfolding this morning, Twitter users quickly made a provisional claim about where the debris came from by examining space junk data visualized on Google Earth. Given that the space junk problem just continues to get worse, here’s a quick guide to tracking our extraterrestrial garbage.
First, download Google Earth, which is available for free from that search engine company. It allows you to visualize the positions of debris around the old blue marble.
Once you’ve got Google Earth installed, you can plug different datasets into it. You can simply click on the files — they usually have the extension KMZ — and they’ll open up in Google Earth.
What Can I Download?
Visit Orbiting Frog blog website for a collection of various files for use with Google Earth:
http://orbitingfrog.com/blog/satellite-kml/
More info: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/howtojunk/#previouspost
Google Earth: http://earth.google.com/
