Today in Technology History

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January 22

Since the Space Age began, many thousands of pieces of debris -- fragments of spacecraft, components of rockets, and so forth -- have accumulated in orbit around Earth. Usually, this junk falls and burns up in the planet's atmosphere. Sometimes, however, large pieces crash to the ground, battered but intact. There is only one known instance of a person being hit by falling space junk, exactly five years ago.

Very early on the morning of January 22, 1997, Lottie Williams, a resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was walking for exercise in a park near her home. She saw a "big bright light, like a fire" in the sky. "It was coming over the park and as it approached us it got bigger. All the colors that you see that come from fire, all those colors were there."

A few minutes later, Williams felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. On the ground, she found a light piece of charred metal, about the size of her hand.

After some investigation, Williams confirmed that the metal fragment came from a rocket that had been used to put a satellite into orbit for the U.S. Air Force in 1996. After nine months in space, a fuel tank from the rocket crashed into an empty field in Texas. A metal splinter from that tank hit Williams on the shoulder.

Every year, about a hundred pieces of space junk bigger than a basketball fall to the ground. While the U.S. government tracks much of the debris in space, there is presently no way to control or prevent its descent to Earth.

• Click here to read an article about Lottie Williams and her story.

• Click here to read about space debris.

• Click here to see a picture of the rocket tank that crashed in Texas.

• Click here for a summary of the satellites and debris in space.

 

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