THERE are faint, mysterious objects orbiting high above the Earth that NASA believes could be gossamer-thin sheets of insulation torn from satellites. Their relatively high speed could make them a danger to working satellites.
Early this year, astronomers from the European Space Agency using a 1-metre telescope in the Canary Islands to scan the skies above the equator reported seeing about 55 faint objects, each about 30 centimetres across. They appeared to be orbiting once a day, tens of thousands of kilometres above the Earth. But unlike geosynchronous satellites, which also take a day to circle the equator, these objects…
