Space Junk Spotting

In the more than fifty years that have passed since the conquest of space began, we have succeeded in filling orbits around the earth with surplus satellites, rocket waste, and other debris. We can view this space junk as archeology in the making or, indeed, as a garbage dump in a class of its own.

What is presented here is a tactical platform for researching this phenomenon, one that seeks to encourage various interpretations for reusing this space excavation site/garbage dump, which is already there and is constantly growing. In this phase, the project thematizes the extent of the pollution in the usable orbits around earth, the ownership of the threatening waste and, consequently, the responsibility for it, and the possibilities of recycling it. There are already a number of registered public and private initiatives for reusing this debris, but they always come up against the question of who owns the individual pieces of junk. Thus, on the level of space, we encounter a paradox in which the owners of the waste material first shirk their responsibility for it and then enforce on their ownership rights, thus making it impossible to resolve the open question of how to recycle all the junk circling the earth in fixed orbits. It is important to know, too, that so far some 38 million pieces of waste material have been documented, ranging in size from those of a few millimeters to the biggest - the main tanks of space shuttle launch vehicles, which measure an incredible 47 meters in length and six meters in diameter.

Space Junk in Google Earthu!
Click here to download Space Junk Catalog (KMZ file) into your Google Earth.

The project shown here is composed of mechanical and programming equipment linked to a database at a U.S. government-owned space observatory; this database contains the fullest possible data on the extent of the pollution and presents remarkable scientific methods for determining the position of space junk. In this way, the wider Internet public is offered a folder of information about space debris, which is strewn across the popular three-dimensional interface Google Earth. The tactical potential of this catalogue is the possibility it provides for finding a creative and constructive solution to the problem of reusing material whose position in usable orbits is already determined, without the enormous initial costs that arise whenever rockets are shot into space.




The color of the satellite icon indicates either the space objects are functional or non functional while flag indicates the owner (country) of the satellite or space junk.

Collaborators: Boštjan Špetič, Jure Čuhalev, Anže Cesar, Almir Karić, Mirae Seo, Yosuke Hayashi,Yu Fukui Thanks to: Atsuhito Sekiguchi, Falk Wittel, Ferenc Kun, Takanori Endo, Kiberpipa, Err0r Production: Galerija Kapelica Project was supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Ljubljana, Sipronika, d.o.o., IAMAS (Institute and Academy for Advanced Media Art and Science, Japan)