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Tue, Nov 21, 2006

NASA: Toss Space Junk Out The Door

Sometimes, Littering IS The Way To Go

This seems an odd reversal of NASA policy... after years of debate over how to best dispose of unwanted detrius from the International Space Station, the agency has come up with the answer: open the door and throw it out.

If that sounds like a somewhat... inelegant... solution to the problem, you're right. That's why NASA says it only endorses the practice in certain cases.

For example, the agency will now recommend astronauts onboard the ISS toss out ammonia tanks when they've run dry, as they can't be safely brought back to Earth.

"We are only going to be doing it in rare cases under very strict conditions, and doing it because of the safety of the crew and the station," Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for NASA's orbital debris program, told the London Daily Telegraph.

The hope is the debris will later burn up in the Earth's atmosphere... and not stay in orbit with other assorted debris and "space junk," where it could pose a danger to the station and other spacecraft.

Hmm... would it help if astronauts tossed their garbage towards the planet?

FMI: www.nasa.gov

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