The growing sphere of space junk surrounding the Earth is a hazard to spaceflight, as International Space Station astronauts found out Thursday when their home was buzzed by a five-inch piece of debris.

As the story about the near miss was unfolding this morning, Twitter users quickly made a provisional claim about where the debris came from by examining space junk data visualized on Google Earth. Given that the space junk problem just continues to get worse, here’s a quick guide to tracking our extraterrestrial garbage.

First, download Google Earth, which is available for free from that search engine company. It allows you to visualize the positions of debris around the old blue marble.

Once you’ve got Google Earth installed, you can plug different datasets into it. You can simply click on the files — they usually have the extension KMZ — and they’ll open up in Google Earth.

• The most general space object dataset is provided by the U.S. Strategic Command, and has been Google Earthified by Analytical Graphics. Download it. Once it opens in Google Earth, open up the sidebar on the left of your screen. You’ll see a link that says, “Satellite Database.” Click on the arrow to its left. A series of check boxes will appear. Uncheck all of them except “Debris” and you’ll see the thousands of objects left in space.
• The amount of space debris jumped just a few months ago when two satellites collided over Siberia. The Orbiting Frog blog allows you to see just debris from that collision with this link: KMZ file.
• Another coder developed a beautiful, live-updating visualization of the same satellite collision debris. You’ll need to download the Google Earth browser plug-in to see it, though.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Related posts:

1. Teenager’s 60ft painting of penis on parents’ roof spotted in space A house, near Hungerford, has had a penis painted...
2. Hubble Spots First Potential Asteroid Collision The X marks the spot of a suspected head-on...
3. The Pentagon’s scientific fringe want to fast-track the quick and easy repair of wartime wounds The Pentagon’s scientific fringe want to fast-track the quick...
4. NASA Brings the Dark Side of the Sun to Your iPhone As the sun reawakens from an anomalously quiet period,...
5. Oil Spill on Track to Reach Atlantic No Later Than October BOULDER, Colorado — Oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.