Artificial Flying Object:

On May 16^th, 2010 The Catalina Sky Survey confirmed the discovery of a small asteroid like object which passed the Earth nearly as close in distance as the moon.  Named the 2010 KQ it has been suggested that this object is artificial, meaning man-made, and is most likely a rocket stage from a past space project.  Speculatively the object was near Earth in 1975 and its Earth-bound orbit brought it within close proximity of the Earth this year.  It is predicted to pass by the Earth or burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere in about 30 years.  This brings up the issue of space junk in orbit around the Earth polluting space.  Everything humans have put in orbit around space will remain there until it either floats further away from us or crashes into the atmosphere.  With the addition of more and more satellites, telescopes and other objects in space a dangerous debris field of material continues to accumulate creating the potential of catastrophic collisions.  With the issue of unaccounted for artificial objects floating in space what type of dangers do you think it can pose for future space missions?  What other types of objects are floating around in space unaccounted for that could inflict damage to beneficial orbiting equipment like the space station and the Hubble telescope?

For more information on this piece of space junk please visit our original source at the following link: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news168.html.