Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 221, orbital debris. I'm Gary Jordan and I'll be your host today. On this podcast,

we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts all to let you know

what's going on in the world of human spaceflight.

Space is not as empty as it seems.

In Earth orbit, there are more than 100 million tiny particles of space debris that exceed

one millimeter in size. More than 20,000 of that debris exceeds 10 centimeters.

That's a lot of stuff and NASA gets questions all the time about how to characterize that and more often how big of a problem that is for satellites and even astronauts in space

On this episode we're going to dive deep into exploring the science of orbital debris

and the operations of how we monitor and sometimes dodge debris on the

International Space Station. Joining us for this episode is Dr. Mark Matine, modeling lead at the NASA Orbital

Debris Program office here at the Johnson Space Center. He's returning to the

podcast after more than four years. Way back on episode seven, he helped us to understand the total solar eclipse that swept

across the United States in August of 2017. Matney covers how NASA is modeling debris and gives us insight into debris from a scientific perspective.

Also joining us for the first time is Jim Cooney. He works in Mission Control as a topo or a trajectory operations and planning flight controller.

He's embedded into space station operations and can describe how we work to monitor

debris and an infrequent scenarios execute a debris avoidance maneuver, or have the crew shelter in place.

Exciting stuff, so let's get right into it.

Enjoy. T-minus B-minus-I second-second-town County.

Mark.

A long, she goes.

Isn't we have a podcast.

...