<Anchor>
The remains of an American satellite that had reached the end of its lifespan passed over the Korean Peninsula yesterday (9th) and crashed into the Alaska Sea.
Planes were once banned from taking off as it was predicted that a satellite weighing 2.5 tons could fall on Korea.
This is reporter Kwon Ran.
<Reporter>
ERBS is an earth observation satellite launched by the United States into space in 1984.
After orbiting the Earth for 18 years after the mission ended in 2005, it was recently crashing due to gravity.
Yesterday (9th) between 12:20 and 1:20 noon, a warning was issued as it was predicted that it could fall near the Korean Peninsula.
The take-off of 40 domestic and international flights was also banned for about 40 minutes.
The government said the satellite passed over the Korean Peninsula without any damage and crashed completely into the sea near Alaska.
As countries around the world speed up the space development race, the so-called 'space garbage', which has reached the end of its lifespan or failed to launch or enter orbit, currently exceeds 9,000 tons.
Last year, the number of artificial space object crashes was about 2,400, more than four times higher than the previous year.
[Cho Seong-gi/Director, Space Risk Monitoring Center, Korea Astronomical Research Institute: Data dependence is high on the United States.
If there is a threat to the Korean Peninsula, we need equipment that can observe...
.]
It seems that the whole world will have to put their heads together to find solutions, such as collecting satellites that monitor the orbit of space debris to analyze the risk of falling or catch and remove it in advance, and cleaning and recycling debris.
(Video editing: Choi Eun-jin, CG: Choi Jae-young, screen courtesy: NASA)