My name is Vanguard.
My body is an aluminum sphere 16.5 cm in diameter.
I weigh 1.47 kilograms.
In 1958, I was the first solar-powered satellite
to be launched into outer space.
I had value. I served a purpose.
Now, I drift aimlessly in perpetual orbit.
Since my retirement, I have become a piece of space junk--
the oldest human artifact circling the earth.
I do not travel alone:
millions of other pieces of junk orbit with me.
Rocket parts, fuel tanks, batteries, dead satellites.
Before we became junk, we each had a use.
But now, we've become a threat.
TV anchor: "We did actually lose a spatula
somewhere along the way. It accidentally got lost."
This spatula, like all space junk,
traveled at 17,500 miles per hour.
Eventually, it burned up in Earth's atmosphere.
"After we learned of its loss, we mourned it,
because this spatula was really trying to get away
and she got away. Clean.
And went off to become a satellite of her own.
Today, the International Space Station is the scene of cautionary vigilance
as flight director Chris Edelen and his Orbit One team
of flight controllers monitor the approach of a small chunk of space
debris in the vicinity of the station that prompted the precautionary
sheltering of the six crew members in their respective spacecraft.
Space debris, as an operating astronaut, was just the enemy.
We can't see it we don't know where it is,
is so it's a sleet of very fast-moving stuff
with closing speeds of 1-2 miles per second
"A piece of space debris is 20 min and 45 secs away.
"Flight controllers standing by here in Mission Control."
"Just 30 seconds to go until the time of closest approach."
"The green light has been given for the crew to back out of their sheltering
procedures with the piece of Cosmo satellite debris having come and gone
with no threat to the International Space Station."
It's a big sky theory that stuff that we can't see will miss us,
and so far we've been lucky.
It's getting crowded up here.
Some of us have already collided with and destroyed working satellites.
One more collision could create a cascade,
creating more debris, followed by more collisions.
Our destructive power might eliminate current satellites altogether. future
Future space exploration may also become impossible.
Every orbital launch generates rocket parts as debris,
as mine once did.
Some pieces remain orbiting forever.
Some burn up.
Some land unpredictably on Earth.
Some, they say, are guided safely into the ocean.
This is some of the debris currently orbiting planet Earth.
We are a floating graveyard.
Apparently people believe that harpoons, magnets, or nets could catch us
and limit the future damage we threatened to cause.
But right now, there's no viable means to bring us back to Earth.
The business of dealing with the unknown
is what attracts a lot of people to science, to astronautics.
Vanguard was America's first satellite in space.
Now, there she is, still up there.
With her little antennas waggling not in the wind,
but in the vacuum of space going around and around and around.
Nothing happening, but perfectly preserved as far as we know.
So one day, someone will go out there with a butterfly net
and snag her.