space debris I
2012
Format 1: 132 x 202 cm / 52 x 79.5 in, edition of 6 + 2 AP
Format 2: 67 x 102 cm / 26.3 x 40.2 in, edition of 6 + 2 AP
Hybrid photography, archival pigment print, aludibond, diasec, custom-made aluminium frame
“space debris I” visualizes the population of defunct objects now in various orbits around the Earth and including everything from spent rocket stages and dead satellites even through to nuclear reactors. There are now some 600,000 objects ranging from 1 to 10cm in diameter and some 21,000 objects larger than 10cm orbiting the Earth at speeds of approximately 28,000 kmph. These all pose a serious threat to satellites, space stations, and operational space flights. The increasing amount of space debris poses a serious environmental pollution problem that needs to be urgently addressed.
The artwork visualizes the amount of space debris from low Earth orbit through to geostationary orbit in the year 2012. Drawn from a data archive, each spherule in the picture represents a real object orbiting in space. The visualization was realized in collaboration with the Institute of Aerospace Systems/TU Braunschweig, Germany, the world’s leading authority on the tracking of space debris.
