{"id":79428,"date":"2025-12-24T13:13:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T07:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=79428"},"modified":"2025-12-24T13:13:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T07:43:22","slug":"micrometeoroids-and-orbital-debris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/micrometeoroids-and-orbital-debris\/","title":{"rendered":"Micrometeoroids and Orbital Debris"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Micrometeoroids and Orbital Debris Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, a piece of debris struck the Chinese crewed vehicle Shenzhou-20, causing a minor crack in the window of its return capsule which raised the concerns regarding protections of astronauts from Micrometeoroids and Orbital Debris (MMOD) that orbit the earth.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Micrometeoroids<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Micrometeoroids are typically <\/span><b>extremely small, with sizes ranging<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> from a few micrometres (a millionth of a meter) to up to about <\/span><b>two millimetres<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Origin:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Most of them originate from <\/span><b>collisions between asteroids<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the Asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter) with a small portion coming from comets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Speed: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They travel at <\/span><b>extremely high velocities<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (about 11 to 72 km\/s).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Distribution:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They exist <\/span><b>everywhere in space,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> but due to the Earth\u2019s gravity pull their distribution is slightly higher near our planet.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The micrometeoroids in Earth\u2019s orbital environment are <\/span><b>effectively uncountable<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and they deliver billions of impacts to orbiting spacecraft annually.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>About Orbital Debris<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are also called <\/span><b>space debris, space junk or space trash.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They consist of <\/span><b>human-made objects in the Earth\u2019s orbit<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which no longer serves any useful purpose.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Origin: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All orbital debris originated primarily from <\/span><b>exploded rocket stages<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, satellites, accidental collisions and <\/span><b>intentional anti-satellite weapon tests.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The typical average speed of orbital <\/span><b>debris is about 10 km\/s.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Orbital debris is mostly concentrated in a \u201cshell\u201d <\/span><b>around the Earth in Low earth Orbit<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (LEO) ranging from <\/span><b>about 200 km up to 2,000 km altitude.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/science\/how-are-we-protecting-astronauts-from-deadly-space-debris\/article70426332.ece#:~:text\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TH<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Micrometeoroids and Orbital Debris both are causing impacts to orbiting spacecraft annually. Read more about Micrometeoroids and Orbital Debris, Origin, Speed, Distribution, News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":79397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4390],"class_list":{"0":"post-79428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-micrometeoroids-and-orbital-debris","9":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}