Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/01
In Pictures: Goodbye UK! Scotland's bid for independence
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 04/30
In Pictures: The kings and queens of modern monarchies
Photos of the Day: Photos of the Day 04/29
Photos of the Day: Photos of the Day 04/28
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 04/27
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 04/26
The International Space Station is the most heavily shielded spacecraft ever. It can outmaneuver large debris and withstand the impact of smaller flotsam.
This photo, taken in 1963, shows the 'energy flash' that occurs when a projectile launched at speeds up to 17,000 miles an hour impacts a solid surface at the Hypervelocity Ballistic Range at NASA's Ames Research Center. This test was used to simulate what happens when a piece of orbital debris hits a spacecraft in orbit.
This photo of the underside of the Space Shuttle Endeavour was taken from the International Space Station during a back flip and careful survey by crewmembers onboard the orbital outpost.
A computer-generated artist's impression released by the European Space Agency depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth.
A PAM-D rocket stage module crashed in the Saudi Arabian desert after a 'catastrophic orbital decay.' This image was originally published by NASA Johnson Space Center in the Orbital Debris Newsletter.
Russia's Mir space station was allowed to fall back to Earth after its closing in 2001. Unburned fragments of the space station fell into the Pacific.
The Space Data Center will screen satellites in geostationary orbit for collisions, near misses and communications interference using operator-supplied data. The above graphic shows satellite orbits propagated by operator data (green); those using public data (orange); and space debris (red).
The surface of heat tiles are pitted on a portion of the destroyed space shuttle Columbia in 2003 that fell onto a ranch owned by Mac Powell in Nacogdoches, TX, after the shuttle broke up as it returned from orbit, killing all seven astronauts and destroying the vehicle on Feb. 1, 2003.
The Long Duration Exposure Facility, an important source of information on the small particle space debris environment, is placed in orbit by the shuttle Challenger crew in this view. Still attached to the remote manipulator system (RMS) end effector, the LDEF is backdropped against Florida, the Bahama Bank, the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic waters.
Is Leo leaking? Leo, the famous sky constellation, visible on the left of the above all-sky photograph, appears to be the source of all the meteors seen in 1998's Leonids Meteor Shower.
A meteor streaks across the night sky above the ghost town of Rhyolite, near Las Vegas, during the annual Orionid shower, so-called because it appears from the direction of the constellation Orion.
A fleck of paint orbiting the Earth at high speed left this crater on the surface of Space Shuttle Challenger's front window.
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/01
In Pictures: Goodbye UK! Scotland's bid for independence
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 04/30
In Pictures: The kings and queens of modern monarchies
Photos of the Day: Photos of the Day 04/29
Photos of the Day: Photos of the Day 04/28
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 04/27
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 04/26
In March 2012, NASA's Fermi space telescope could have collided with a Russian naval signals satellite, were it not for an untested maneuver.
Thanks to an emergency maneuver in March 2012, a NASA space telescope avoided a potentially nasty encounter with a Cold War relic.
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