Project Adrift "revived" space junk

According to NASA estimates, 21 thousand objects more than 10 cm in size have already accumulated above the Earth. Another 500 thousand are particles from 1 to 10 cm in size. And the number of particles less than 1 cm exceeds 100 million. Among space debris, you can find anything - satellites, work tools and even gloves . According to rough estimates, its total weight reaches 7 thousand tons.

To draw attention to this problem, film director Kat Le Kuter and artist Nick Ryan created the creative project Adrift. It lets you hear the "melody" of space junk.

History of the project and its team

The main goal of the Adrift project is to increase people's awareness of the problem of space debris through videos, audio broadcasts and social networks.

A team of 21 people works on the project, including a writer, musician, director, programmer and teacher in the field of aerospace engineering.

Project authors:

Kat Le Cooter is a film director. Her short films have won numerous awards and have been shown at key festivals around the world, including Edinburgh, Berlin and Cannes.

Nick Ryan is an artist, sound engineer and composer, known for his conceptual approach to creating audio files. BAFTA Video Game Award Winner in the Best Sound category.

According to Cat Le Cooter, the creation of the project was inspired by the stories of astronauts who lost their belongings in outer space. “I didn't know anything about space junk. But somehow I stumbled upon the news about astronaut Pierce Sellers, who in 2006, during repair work in open space, lost his spatula. I could not imagine how the most common tool revolves around the Earth at an incredible speed of almost 28 thousand kilometers per hour! Is this the deadliest blade in the world? It amazed me so much that I began to delve into the topic, ”Kat told in an interview with the Directors Notes.

More about the project team

How to hear the "songs" of space junk

The Adrift project consists of three components: a documentary, a sound instrument and a social network. Together, it allows you to monitor space junk - to see it and hear it.

Watch: short documentary “Adrift”

The film covers environmental problems associated with space junk. The story is told on behalf of the Avangard-1 satellite, the first satellite in space powered by solar batteries, which is considered the oldest man-made object in near-Earth space.

Listen: Phonograph Machine 9

The phonograph transforms the movement of 27 thousand fragments of space debris into sound in real time. A navigator is connected to the sound instrument, which tracks the location of the orbital debris. As soon as any piece of scrap iron flies over the place where the phonograph is located, Machine 9 comes to life and makes a special sound. It is generated by a needle moving along a cylinder with depressions engraved on it. At the same time, a photo of the object appears on the screen of the computer next to it.



The library of sounds for space debris “songs” was created on the basis of working with earthly debris. Kat Le Kuter and Nick Ryan selected objects similar to those in Earth orbit. In the resulting library, low tones correspond to large fragments of orbital debris, while high tones correspond to large fragments.

Adopt: Twitter microblog

For the social network Twitter, a special bot was developed that offers users to “take care of” one of the three objects that have turned into space junk. Fragments of space junk in the microblog are personalized. The authors of the projects tried to give them individual human traits.

One of the objects for "adoption" is the US satellite Avangard-1. A metal ball the size of a grapefruit has been in a high elliptical orbit for six decades. The satellite transmitted radio signals until 1965. All the satellites that were launched before him, have long since returned to Earth's atmosphere. According to expert estimates, this orbital long-liver will have to circle around the Earth for at least another 240 years before it enters the dense layers of the atmosphere.

From Avangard-1 satellite Twitter: “I fly over the Earth every 130 minutes. I will continue to fly over you for the next 240 years. ”

You can also get "guardianship" over the suit SuitSat, which launched into outer space since February 2006. The suit was equipped with batteries and a radio transmitter - he broadcast the recording of schoolchildren’s voices with a message to amateur radio operators around the world.

From Twitter SuitSat : "I was launched into space in 2006 by astronauts from the International Space Station."

Another “project participant” is a fragment of the Fengyun-1C satellite. In 2007, the Chinese Space Agency decided to shoot down the Fengyun-1C meteorological satellite with a rocket. As a result of the collision, the satellite broke up into thousands of fragments, and about 3,300 new fragments were simultaneously added to the space debris. Now they make up 28% of all garbage in orbit. The incident was the largest case of debris in space.

From Twitter "Fengyun-1C" : "I was born in space. My parents were a meteorological satellite (1999) and a rocket (2007). ”

When one of the selected objects will fly over the place where the user is located, he will inform him about this by posting on Twitter.

A serious problem for humanity

The Adrift project is a timely reminder that people need to stop sending thousands of things into space and think about how to solve the problem with space junk.

Colossal accumulation of various debris can lead to Kessler's syndrome , when the emergence of a large number of fragments will close access to humanity in space. Scientists from all over the world offer different methods of disposal - from the use of balloons and lasers to the use of robots. However, an effective method of solving the problem has not yet been found.