Project Title: Space Junk
BASIS Advisor: Mr. Winter
Internship Location: Digital (New York, NY)
Onsite Mentor: Dr. Chonko
One of the largest problems to the future of science and the development of travel almost seems to be invisible to the general population. I am speaking of course about space junk. Through the creation and destruction of satellites and rockets, debris in the Earth’s orbit is a product of just that. Through this project, I will ask, “What are the most effective ways to clear the Earth’s Orbit of debris (aka space junk) and how will this debris affect space travel in the near future?” This is something that had come to my attention after seeing images of satellites that had been obliterated by what seemed to be a pea-sized piece of metal. This was not some kind of trick or illusion, this was a piece of metal that had a diameter of about one centimeter and had created a crater in the metal’s surface. If something like this were to happen to a weather satellite or an internet satellite this could create serious delays. Not only is it an inconvenience for us down here, but it is also a huge hazard for those on the ISS and other similar satellites. Space Junk is not something that will solve itself. Currently, humans send more satellites into orbit than satellites that fall out of orbit. Every year about 1,000 satellites are launched, and only about 200 fall out of orbit and burn up in our atmosphere. Throughout the project, I will collect and analyze data that has already been created to create models that show the general public the severity of this problem. I also hope to identify one or more solutions. I expect to find a lot of data on space junk that is pretty big and to use the data to create models and to show how this is a problem. The harder part will be to find data and create models to then show what the best solution might be and how to go about getting rid of space junk. This research would be a great step forward and will perhaps show the general public as well as companies that this is a huge issue. In the future, I hope to use these findings to do further research in college and perhaps create physical solutions to this very real problem.
My Posts
Conclusion
Jun 23, 2021
The last 10 weeks have been quite the learning experience and it has been great being able to share this with everyone through these blog posts. Before I talk a little about my experience I want to thank all who have helped me during this time, especially Dr. Chonko and Mr. Winter. During the beginning […]
Week 10: Working on the Presentation
Jun 18, 2021
This last week of the project was solely dedicated to wrapping things up and completing the last few things I needed to complete in order to have a successful project. In order to create my presentation, I made sure to include many things from my defense proposal that I thought were important to understand the […]
Week 9: Using Filters on Tableau
Jun 18, 2021
This week was focused a lot more on creating my own graphs that I would use during my presentation. Over this last week, I created many graphs that involved many different areas of the problem and I tried to make them as easy to read a possible especially for someone who doesn’t know as much […]
Week 8: Starting to Create More Graphs
Jun 18, 2021
This week I mainly try to take everything I saw from the other graphs and incorporate it with some of the graphs I have created. With this being said, there were many things I was not able to mimic just to my lack of experience with Tableau and the short amount of time that I […]
Week 7: Looking for Some Inspiration
May 25, 2021
This last week has been a lot of the same things in terms of getting used to using Tableau and what it has to offer. A part of that is seeing what some others have created using the platform to see the full extent of what I can create, and get some ideas for something […]
Week 6: Continuing to explore Tableau
May 13, 2021
This week was very similar to last week in terms of what I did and where the project is headed. I once again worked a lot with tableau and tried to get as familiar as I could with how it all works. I would say I got the basics down and am able to create […]
Week 5: Starting to Create Visuals
May 04, 2021
This week I spent a lot of time learning how to use both google sheets but mainly tableau – which is a platform geared towards specifically creating visualizations of data in many different ways. Different ways to visualize data can be charts, graphs, images, and infographics. Through my research and reading of the ESA’s public […]
Week 4: Some Overall Solutions
Apr 27, 2021
For this week, it was a little difficult to carve out a large chunk of time because I had to travel to the west coast to check out schools. However, what I did find were some of the solutions that were being proposed by other people in order to get rid of the problem at […]
Week 3: Looking Through More Data
Apr 19, 2021
This week’s focus was on the same data set as last week’s, however, being almost 90 pages long there is quite a bit to cover in terms of what kind of space junk is in Earth’s orbit and what it might look like. There were a few specific areas within the document as a whole […]
Week 2: Reading Through Data Sets
Apr 13, 2021
This week I looked through the ESA’s Space Environment Statistics and the Environmental Report which is the latest report on space junk the ESA has issued. This document starts off by describing the problem very similar to what I did in the defense proposal. This introduction goes on to say “Ever since the start of […]
Week 1: Finding and Collecting Data
Apr 04, 2021
Hello and welcome back! This past week I have made small progress on the overall progress of the project itself, but worked a lot on trying to layout a successful plan for the next few weeks. One of my main focuses this week was to do a little bit more research on data sets and […]
Week 0: Introduction to Space Junk
Mar 31, 2021
Hello everyone! My name is Liam Duffy, and I have been attending Basis Independent Brooklyn for the last 4 years starting as a freshman in high school. For as long as I can remember, I have always had a burning curiosity about space and what we are actually looking at when we look up in […]