Searching for Space Trash

Not all human-made space trash is eliminated so quickly. For example, Elon Musk’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk%27s_Tesla_Roadster" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Tesla Roadster</a> which was launched to space as a dummy payload on the Falcon Heavy test flight in 2018, will continue on an elliptic orbit around the Sun for tens of millions of years. <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.04718.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Computer simulations</a> of the Tesla Roadster’s orbit in the next 15 million years shows 22%, 12% and 12% of the orbit realizations impacting the Earth, Venus, and the Sun, respectively. Musk’s space trash will eventually be cleaned up within a time period comparable to the 66 million years that elapsed since non-avian dinosaurs were killed by the impact of the <a href="https://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/Chicxulub/regional-effects/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Chicxulub meteorite</a>. Nature will eventually take care of cleaning up the Tesla Roadster, and so far no courtroom fined SpaceX for polluting interplanetary space, the way companies are fined for trashing public spaces. <a href="https://avi-loeb.medium.com/searching-for-space-trash-e0a552586c29">Read More</a>