SG20132438 SPACE DEBRIS: PREVENTING THE SKY TO FALL ON OUR HEADS

Résumé

As it is written in the classical French humoristic comic “Astérix” by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, the Gauls were only afraid that the sky would fall down on their heads. It is true that many Ancient civilizations – and especially the Celts – feared celestial bodies and worshipped them. Astérix and Obélix may be quite right in fact: the sky may literally fall down on our heads, or more precisely what we have sent into the sky since October 4th 1957 when the first man-made satellite, “Sputnik” was launched. Since, thousands of launches have been operated by an increasing number of states and all this human activity has produced waste, sometimes called “space junk” but which is usually referred to as “space debris”.