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Earth's orbit is crammed with junk. Since the launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957, the skies over our heads have become increasingly crowded with the objects and debris we have placed or dumped up there. The more of this space refuse there is, the more likely it is there will be potentially catastrophic collisions with working satellites or spacecraft. Here is our guide to what's circling our world and the best ways to deal with it. By Madeleine Finlay [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an interview with astronaut educator Barbara Morgan. As well as playing a vital role on board, she will broadcast lessons to children on Earth. Her predecessor and best friend, Christa McAuliffe, was killed in the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986. With the investigation into the recent Columbia accident almost complete, she explains why teaching children about the wonder and science of space is more crucial now than ever. Barbara Morgan was an Idaho elementary schoolteacher before being selected as the back-up candidate for NASA's Teacher in Space programme in July 1985. She and Christa McAuliffe were chosen from 11,000 applicants. Knowing what happened to Challenger in 1986 and to Columbia in 2003, she is not nervous or apprehensive about it. She will be alert on the launch pad. She told that NASA and the families of the astronauts have received hundreds of thousands of letters from children, saying they feel terrible and sending their thoughts and prayers.

The article discusses the risks surrounding the Chinese government's policy towards space debris from space vehicles, artificial satellites and space stations, including the space station Tiangong-1's debris following its accident.

The article discusses the failure to launch of the Crew Dragon capsule, owned by the astronautics company SpaceX, during its tests on April 20, 2019, including in regard to the goal having Dragon bring SpaceX astronauts into outer space.

The article focuses on the impact that the failure of a Russian Soyuz rocket carrying two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) may have. It states Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and U.S. astronaut Nick Hague are in good condition but encountered g-forces six or seven times of that of Earth's surface. It mentions the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has relied on the Russian Roscosmos space agency to bring astronauts to the ISS after retiring the space shuttle.

The article offers news briefs related to science. The British National Health Service (NHS) has declared that it will begin artificial blood transfusion trials by 2017. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the drug midazolam can be used in capital punishment in the U.S. The space technology company SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket exploded after its launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The article focuses on images taken by the U.S. National Aeronautics Space Administration's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on October 20, 2016 which reveals the crash site of the European Space Agency and Roscosmos ExoMars Schiaparelli lander which was supposed to touch down on Mars on October 19.

The article discusses the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) efforts for enforcing new safety protocols during the launch of its space shuttles and completion of the half-built International Space Station (ISS) before 2010. NASA was traumatized after the accident of its space shuttle Columbia in 2003. However, NASA successfully relaunched its Discovery space shuttle on July 4, 2006. NASA has planned 16 shuttle missions for the completion of the ISS. NASA is implementing new safety procedures to ensure the successful missions. About $1.3 billion has been spent by NASA to plan and to execute safety measures.

The article focusses on consequences of the loss of Columbia space shuttle on not only the US space programme but also for the future of crewed space exploration. On March 1 , 2003 the space shuttle Atlantis was to have delivered the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module designed for transferring cargo onto and off the station, and the External Stowage Platform, to supply additional storage space. Although NASA has been insisting in recent years that science is at the forefront of its space programme, its partners in the project have complained about proposed budget cuts that would have shrunk lab space and cut the station's permanent crew from seven to three. Even before the accident, science experiments were being squeezed off shuttle schedules.

The article focusses on the safety worries regarding the Columbia space shuttle programme from the beginning of its flight. During Columbia's lift-off from the Kennedy Space Center launch pad in 1981, debris from the huge external fuel tank was seen falling off and striking the fragile thermal protection tiles on the underside of the craft. While the shuttle was in orbit, teams of engineers analyzed the launch video, and turned cameras on military spy satellites to photograph the shuttle's underside and assess the damage. The flight was however successful amidst several worries. The image that was in everyone's minds during Columbia's first flight was the one that came nearly 22 years later in 2003. During the 112 flights in between, tiles have been damaged many times by ice or debris falling from the external tank. No safety measures were taken even then to provide for the repair of tiles for safety of the vehicle. INSET: KEY EVENTS IN THE SHUTTLE'S HISTORY.

The article explores the reasons behind the accident of the Columbia space shuttl leading to the death of its crew of seven members. About 80 seconds into the flight, a briefcase-sized chunk of foam insulation with a mass of just over a kilogram broke away from the shuttle's giant external fuel tank and collided with Columbia's left wing, shattering into a white cloud. NASA knew that an almost identical incident with Columbia in 1992 had gouged a hole in the heat-shield tiles less than 3 centimetres deep and about dozen centimetres long, but had not penetrated the protective layer. The Columbia scientific mission proceeded without incident until re-entry. Everything went wrong suddenly. The Columbia's flight control system detected excessive drag on the left side of the vehicle and began to compensate using the elevons flight-control surfaces on the rear of the delta wings unusually by firing two small thruster jets. There was also an unusual temperature rise inside the craft allowing the plasma to invade the craft leading to the accident.

The article discusses whether human or mechanical error was to blame for the crash of commercial spaceflight company Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo craft, which resulted when a mechanism designed to slow the descent of the craft, called feathering, deployed earlier than intended.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including space tourism, spacecraft accidents involving Orbital Sciences' Antares carrier rocket and Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, and the Philae lander's attempts to touch down on comet 67P.

The article reports that a Soyuz rocket, called Progress, crashed into Russia's Altai region, casting doubts upon the ability of Soyuz rockets to safely ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

The article discusses the apparent breakdown of the UNITEC-1 space vehicle designed and built by university students and launched aboard a Japan space agency rocket in May 2010.

The article discusses attempts by the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) to remove a land rover that is stuck in a sandy pit on the planet Mars.

The article reports that a team of hypersonics engineers says that a design flaw probably caused Beagle 2 spacecraft to the Mars to tumble out of control as it descended. Till now, the loss of the probe was attributed to the general failings of a poorly funded mission despite an exhaustive enquiry by the European Space Agency. Beagle 2 was designed to self-stabilise during its descent through the Martian atmosphere.

The article reports on the destruction of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s prototype ALV X-1 rocket, which was used for an experiment to test Mars probe technology, on August 22, 2008. It provides information on the rocket's builder, Minnesota-based Alliant Techsystems, its condition, and what transpired before the incident. Details on other experiments such as the SCRAMP and other NASA rocket failures are also given.

The article reports that a U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) investigation board concluded that NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) lost contact because commands were sent to the wrong memory address on the onboard computer.

The article discusses space accidents caused by major malfunctions in various space shuttles. Since the U.S. started sending astronauts in orbit, 10 people have died. However, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, U.S., has a good record as far as space travel is concerned. Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher, sent to space was the first ordinary citizen to die with astronauts. Her death is painful as her voyage shows that simple people can become heroes too.

The article reports that Cosmos 1, the world's first spacecraft designed to sail on light beams alone, was conceived by the Planetary Society, a private not-for-profit group of space enthusiasts who raise money for novel and innovative projects that will seed further exploration. On the same day that Cosmos 1 was lost, a Russian Molniya rocket crashed into the Tyumen region of Siberia carrying a top-secret defence satellite. Losing Cosmos was a great shame, doubly so because it wasn't insured and it will take a while for the Planetary Society to raise the money for another attempt.

This article reports that the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is sending debris from the February 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Students there will become the first people outside NASA to analyze the wreckage. Lehigh students have been sent 50 pieces of glass, ceramic, polymers, composites and various metals, which they will examine with an array of microscopes.

In a bid to predict the threat to satellites from space debris, the European Space Agency is teaming up with a pair of physicists who spend their time smashing eggshells. This improbable collaboration is founded on the idea that eggshells and discarded pieces of space rockets will break up in a similar way. After a rocket has lifted its payload into space, the final stage and its fuel tanks are often abandoned. If a micrometeoroid or piece of space debris penetrates the tank, the dregs can ignite, causing an explosion that shatters the rocket body and creates a cloud of debris. Since the space age began in the 1950s, there have been almost 200 explosions in orbit, just under half of which involved old rocket bodies. The resulting debris poses a threat to orbiting craft.

More than 100,000 particles of metal are orbiting the Earth, posing an unexpected danger to spacecraft. The particles, which range in diameter from 5 millimetres to more than 50 millimetres, were ejected from Soviet-era satellites and are now concentrated in an orbit 900 kilometres above the Earth. The orbit is only shared by remote-sensing and communications satellites. The space shuttle, which is far more vulnerable to fast-moving particles, flies at less than half that height. But over time the particles will lose height. A 1997 report from the United States National Research Council warned that stray particles just a few millimetres across could punch a hole in the leading edge of a shuttle wing, causing a disaster on re-entry similar to the Columbia accident last year.

The Hubble Space Telescope has done great service to science for 14 years. Hubble images are now the subject of art exhibitions. Even pictures whose scientific purpose is unclear are often breathtakingly beautiful. Hubble is a lost cause. Early service missions spectacularly restored Hubble's defective vision and subsequent missions have installed ever more sophisticated instruments. On any future shuttle mission, the accident board has stipulated, there must be the ability to inspect the vehicle's outer shell and, if required, to carry out certain types of in-orbit repair.

The article focuses on the Columbia space craft accident. A chunk of fuel tank cladding fired at a replica space shuttle wing blew a whopping great hole in its leading edge last week. The foam easily breached the reinforced carbon composite (RCC) panels of the wing, a material NASA thought so strong it had barely tested it. Carried out at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, it managed to reproduce with uncanny accuracy at least four different aspects of the events thought to have taken place during Columbia's final mission, as revealed by ground images, radar, and the doomed shuttle's on-board sensors. First, the test proved conclusively that a foam insulation block of the size and shape seen in the launch video could indeed cause enough damage to lead to the break-up of the craft when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. Further analysis of the wing replica, which used actual RCC panels from the surviving shuttles, revealed that in addition to the hole itself, the impact produced a series of deep cracks in the material, leaving some sections barely attached. INSET: ATLANTIS WING BREACH 'IRRELEVANT'.

Focuses on U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's focus on ice impact risk following the destruction of space shuttle columbia, allegedly owing to a mystery object that struck the shuttle's wing during lift-off. Steps needed to avert damages caused by ice; Doubts regarding the object that struck the wing; Analysis of the lift-off damage problem and the debris.

Focuses on the speculations of a U.S.-based engineer on the cause of the space vehicle accident involving the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's space shuttle Columbia. Possibility of explosion of tires due to the heat generated on the shuttle's re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere; Possible consequences of damage to wheel wells of a space shuttle.

After the space vehicle Columbia's accident, while the U.S. mourned the death of the seven astronauts, attention also turned towards the three men still in orbit aboard the International Space Station (ISS). NASA immediately informed the ISS crew members and astronauts Kenneth Bowersox and Donald Pettit and cosmonaut Nikolai Budarin about the disaster. They mourned the loss of their friends and colleagues. According to NASA, the supplies on board the cargo ship for the ISS will be sufficient in conjunction with whatever is already on board to supply the Expedition 6 crew members through the end of June 2003.

Editorial. Focuses on the safety of space vehicle flights in the wake of the accident of Columbia space shuttle leading to the death of several astronauts. Investigations of the cause of the accident from readings sent by the shuttle; Questions raised on NASA's method of risk assessment regarding the case of Challenger disaster in 1992.

Reports on the probable loss of biological experiments carried out by the European and French space agencies after the crash-landing in March 1995 in Russia of the capsule carrying them.

Reports on the allegations surrounding the 1960 space program accident at the Baikonur launch pad in the Soviet Union. Speculations that the program was not a Mars probe but a prototype SS-7 missile; Political prestige earned by the country for several successful space missions during the period; Alleged reason behind the country's desire to build the prototype missile.

Reports that the destruction of the Clipper Graham experimental rocket in summer 1996 was caused by a worker failing to reconnect a hose carrying hydraulic fluid after a routine check according to a US National Aeronautics and Space Administration investigation.

Reports on the collision of the French artificial satellite Cerise with debris of an Ariane rocket. Projections on the two's possible collision in the future; Efforts at putting Cerise on track.

Reports on launch failure of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Clipper Graham rocket, when it tipped over during landing and causing it to crash and burn. Ill-fated flight of the vehicle; Complete destruction.