Monday, October 04, 2004

Cleaning house at the International Space Station

With the space shuttles out of service, the International Space Station is having problems.

Russian Space Agency capsules have been able to bring needed supplies and change out crew members, but they have much less capacity than the shuttles do. There's no room to take away garbage.

A load of clutter was ejected into space during a space walk, which will have eased the situation somewhat. However, it had to be done carefully so the stuff doesn't become "deadly boomerangs". Maybe one of the supply runs from Russia should include some miniature boosters with enough power to de-orbit a couple hundred pounds of junk and let it burn up on re-entry.

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