NASA jettisoning hardware

HOUSTON — NASA says it has little choice but to jettison two pieces of junk hardware, including a 1,400-pound container filled with ammonia coolant, from the International Space Station early next week.

Some fragments probably will survive a fiery re-entry through the atmosphere and strike the ground, the space agency said Wednesday. The six- to seven-hour spacewalk by NASA’s Clay Anderson and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, in which the container and a 218-pound brace for a communications antenna will be discarded, is scheduled to start Monday morning.

The space agency has shunned the practice of throwing trash from the station into free space. In this instance, NASA says it has taken measures to ensure that the discarded hardware will not endanger other spacecraft.

The decision was driven in part by the relatively new White House space policy to retire the shuttle fleet after station assembly is complete in 2010.

Originally, the coolant tank was to return to Earth on a shuttle. But the 14 remaining shuttle station assembly flights will be filled by equipment that leaves no room for the container or the brace, Shireman said. Also, the ammonia container has surpassed its structural design life.

The device was delivered to the station by shuttle in August 2001. The ammonia inside was used to recharge the station’s temporary cooling system in case of a leak.

(Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com)
(Related article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4980052.html)

Now they are dumping their junk from space? Like if we didn’t have enough junk on earth already! Is this going to hit a populated area? Why don’t they send to in space instead?