Travelers in the Night Eps. 895 & 896: Tracking Space Junk & Sneaky But Potentially Dangerous

Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( @Nmcanopus ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. travelersinthenight.org

From April 2026.

Today's 2 topics:

- According to NASA an average of one catalogued piece of space junk per day has come down to Earth over the past 50 years. Research is described which can track space junk in the atmosphere and provide the starting location and altitude for tracking clouds of environmentally problematic toxic chemical and/or nuclear contaminants released by the disintegration of reentering spacecraft.

 

- My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Greg Leonard was asteroid hunting with our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona when he came across an unknown moving point of light in the night sky. After Greg reported his observations to the Minor Planet Center his discovery was tracked by telescopes in California, Romania, Germany, New Mexico, Arizona, Bavaria, and Japan. Astronomers used these data to calculate that Greg's discovery orbits the sun between Venus and Earth, estimate its size to be approximately twice the length of a football field, and give it the name 2026 BX4. 

 

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