Unit4Thedangerofspacejunk.docVIP

Unit 4 Text A The Danger of Space Junk Venturing into space is inherently risky, and orbital debris is just one of many hazards that a space traveler faces. After just forty years in space we have seriously polluted the final frontier. Valuable orbits are peppered with debris. A small group of orbital-debris experts have been concerned about this problem for years, and have slowly gained the attention of the government agencies and commercial enterprises that are now leading the way into space. Predicting “Junk” is old or discarded articles that are considered useless or of little value. Try to remember and write down the words closest in meaning to it. Look at the title of the unit. Work with another student and make a) A list of objects that you think will make up the junk in space; b) A list of dangers that will probably be caused by space junk; c) A list of possible ways to dispose of space junk. Now read the passage and check whether what you predicted is actually mentioned and discussed. Space may seem remote, but it’s really not that far away. If you could drive your car straight up, in just a few hours you’d reach the altitude at which the space shuttle flies. The popular orbits for satellites begin twice as far up — about 400 miles above our heads. The only satellites that are truly distant from Earth are the several hundred in geosynchronous orbit, a tenth of the way to the moon. There telecommunications and weather satellites orbit at the same rate that Earth rotates, allowing them to hover above a single spot on the Equator. Since 1957 the United States and what is now the former Soviet Union have conducted about 4,000 space launches (the launches conducted by all other countries and international organizations combined account for just a few hundred additional forays into space). The leftovers from these launches — used-up satellites, the rockets that carried the satellites aloft, equipment from aborted scientific experiments — form a