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The adverb “Tellingly” (second paragraph) could be...

In May 2021, a hole was found in a robotic arm aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The suspected culprit was a piece of rogue space junk. While thankfully no astronauts were injured, it has re-focussed attention on the growing problem of orbital debris.

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How did we get here?

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It’s easy to forget that just seven decades ago the Moon

was the only thing orbiting the Earth. On 1 January 2021 there

were 6,542 satellites in orbit. Tellingly, only just over half of

them were active. That’s a lot of useless metal careering around

the planet at 28,000 kph — ten times faster than a bullet.

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How bad is the problem?

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Very bad and getting worse. Estimates suggest there are

currently half a million pieces of debris the size of a marble or

larger and 100 million pieces of debris above one millimeter

across. Yet only 27,000 pieces are actively tracked by the US

Department of Defense.

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What is Kessler syndrome?

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It’s a catastrophic chain of events in which a satellite is

shattered by a piece of space junk (or a collision with another

satellite) and the resulting debris destroys more satellites creating

more junk and so on in a never-ending cascade. It’s a domino

effect – one piece falls and then takes the rest with it – and is

named after NASA scientist Donald Kessler, who outlined the

dangers back in 1978.

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What can we do about it?

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Better regulation of new launches would help, as right

now it’s a bit of a free-for-all. There are existing regulations in

place to try and mitigate the dangers, such as a 25-year de-orbit

rule for missions in low-Earth orbit. However, ESA’s Space

Debris Environment Report says that less than 60 per cent of

those flying in low-Earth orbit currently stick to the rules.

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Colin Stuart. Space Junk: Is it a disaster waiting to happen?

Internet: <www.sciencefocus.com> (adapted).

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Considering the text above, judge the following items.

The adverb “Tellingly” (second paragraph) could be correctly replaced with convincingly, without changing the meaning of the text.


C

Certo


E

Errado