'Refrigerator-sized' device to be heaved into space

If you thought hoisting a giant banana above Texas was outrageous, you may indeed chuckle to learn that a 1,400-pound refrigerator-sized container of ammonia will be jettisoned from the International Space Station next week. On July 23rd, to be precise, Expedition 15 crew member Clayton Anderson will have the, um, privilege of heading outside in order to toss "two large hunks of unneeded equipment towards Earth," and once ejected, they will be tracked by NASA for an entire year until they finally begin to enter the atmosphere. Notably, officials are still not sure where the debris will land just yet, but if you happen to find your fridge replaced with a partially disintegrated (albeit similarly sized) container of fetid material in the next year or two, you'll know exactly what went awry.

[Image courtesy of MSNBC]

[Fatima @ Jul 20th 2007 11:30PM]

And this is gadget news...how?

[kyle allen @ Jul 20th 2007 11:33PM]

its a gadget, plus its in space! what the heck are you complaining about?!

[kyle allen @ Jul 20th 2007 11:34PM]

isn't there some kind of law about not hurling big chunks of metal and endangering people's lives?

[Zachary Kent @ Jul 20th 2007 11:36PM]

unless it has heat shields it wont survive the re-entry intact. Likely it will burn up completely.

[Philpott @ Jul 21st 2007 2:45AM]

That's all well and good but giant rocks don't have heat shields and they make it through the atmosphere like nobody's business.

[NovaLand @ Jul 21st 2007 7:51AM]

You see them burn up like matches and only a few of all those million rocks ever makes it to the ground, quite reduced in size.

[Leonard Nimrod @ Jul 20th 2007 11:38PM]

They should just send everything on a trajectory toward the Sun or just use the darkside of the moon as a refuse pile.

All this debris orbiting our planet reminds me of early civilization that had no provisions for proper waste. It will have to be dealt with at some point and by then it will be a huge undertaken.

[alf @ Jul 21st 2007 12:00AM]

No, we'll never have to clean it up. Just like a crappy neighbor, once we trash the place, we'll move.

[John Doe @ Jul 21st 2007 12:21AM]

You do realize that at the point of where the ISS is, is still well within the pull of Earth's gravity and would require "assistance" to reach an escape orbit. Just lobbing it away from Earth would probably not result in a velocity high enough to do anything other then set it in a slightly higher orbit.

[robothouse @ Jul 21st 2007 11:08AM]

If Futurama has taught me one thing, it's that trash problems can always be solved with ballistics.

[TIMMAH! @ Jul 21st 2007 12:09AM]

Er, where did the ammonia come from? (or do we really want to know...)

[Brad @ Jul 22nd 2007 10:50AM]

Ammonia is used on the cold-side of the external heat exchangers. That is, when the ISS needs to release heat (because, say, it's not in Earth's shade and is generating lots of internal heat), it will pump heat into the ammonia. The ammonia then flows through large radiators (IIRC) on the back of the solar panels. The radiators are hot, the vast expanse of the universe is cold, and you get radiation heat transfer.

Why, however, the ISS no longer needs these things... I have no idea. Maybe they were like top-off containers?

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Jul 21st 2007 12:39AM]

What is the point to doing this in the first place?

[False @ Jul 21st 2007 1:07AM]

The Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) was designed to be a piece of equipment that could refill one of the early external thermal control system cooling loops in the event of a loop loss due to an ammonia leak to space. Those early external loops were decommissioned early this year after the permanent external system was brought online and configured to provide cooling to the U.S. Lab. The EAS currently resides on the P6 truss and is not certified to remain on it when the truss is moved during the mission in August. It also cannot be used to refill the permanent system. As such, it is getting tossed. It served its purpose and luckily never needed to be used.

[Mitch R. @ Jul 21st 2007 1:58AM]

Since when was NASA able to litter?

[Za @ Jul 21st 2007 3:05AM]

I sincerely hope that was an attempt at sarcasm. All the shit we put up there...stays up until it comes down. A lot of it is going to stay up there a while. They term it "space junk".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris
When satellites cease functioning, nothing says that they have to fall out of orbit and burn up. A lot of them just stay up there, and yes, gravity will catch up eventually, but for some of the higher ones, it could be decades.

[ejordan @ Jul 21st 2007 10:41PM]

Gravity doesn't catch up. Friction does.

[hothotdisco @ Jul 21st 2007 2:27AM]

If this fucking thing lands on my house, im gonna sue lol.

[John Jasinski @ Jul 21st 2007 2:49AM]

I'd be more worried about jet engines and time warps.

[almostinfamous @ Jul 21st 2007 3:06AM]

donny darko FTW!

[fearless_fx @ Jul 21st 2007 3:12AM]

space is fukin huge and mostly empty, i don't understand why we dont just jettison all our garbage and junk into it, it would be a solid way to preserve the environment.

[John Doe @ Jul 21st 2007 5:02AM]

Because its expensive as shit to launch even a ton of something into space; let alone get it in position to leave Earth's practical gravitational pull. Plus do you know how insanely detrimental to the environment it would be to try and toss a few billion tons of whatever into orbit? Yah lets just toss all of our pop bottles, used TV's, used computers, on a few million Titan's. (Which by the way wouldn't get it out of orbit. It would simply get it out of the way until its orbit decided to decay.)
I swear some of the things I read on this blog makes me think some of you guys need to go back and take remedial science\physics. Heck I'm nowhere near an expert in such things but, again, we are talking basic common sense here.
Next you will be suggesting Superman help haul all this shit to the sun.

[CF @ Jul 21st 2007 3:45AM]

Are we hoping that spilling 50,000 liters of Ammonia into the upper atmosphere starts some kind of chain reaction that maybe let's all the air out of the planet ? Why don't we let of a few dozen nukes up there too - 'just to see what happens' of course..???

[Zach Al-Nasser @ Jul 21st 2007 4:46AM]

You do realize that you cannot "let the air out of the planet". its not a balloon, there is no physical permeable medium holding the atmosphere in place. it is held there by graity, and as wrong as dumping 50,000 L of ammonia into the atmosphere sounds, it wont pop a hole in your imaginary atmosphere balloon.

[CF @ Jul 21st 2007 5:06AM]

Yes, thanks I did know that. I was being ironic. Shame there is no emoticon for that

I was going to say 'let the infinite vacuum of space in' but I thought that was too obscure and would draw a corrective commentary so I made, what is now seen to be in hindsight, an equally confusing comment.

[John Doe @ Jul 21st 2007 5:24AM]

Yah but do we have an idea of what Ammonia does to the upper atmosphere? I mean its like dropping a pill that can keep this shit from dispersing until it starts to burn up. Granted how does Ammonia react to 2,000F+ temps? I'd have to imagine it has to start breaking down at such temperatures.

I love wikipedia. The autoignition temperature of ammonia is 1 203.8F However it is also lighter then air which means it would stay up there. Again how does this shit react with the upper atmosphere or more importantly the stratosphere...gah its too early in the morning on a weekend to think about this crap....zzzZZZZZzzzzz

[CF @ Jul 21st 2007 5:52AM]

pill indeed. It's all designed to burn up in one almighty flash isn't it...

well, I say if Nasa wants to burn cat p*ss let em...they've been terrific underachievers for some time now...

...and people wonder why it's nearly 40 years since we, (well the USA at least), did anything worth a damn in space and why the stellar ambitions demonstrated in Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey, (Hal notwithstanding), seem like a hollow empty joke right now...

[Tech^Cellfish @ Jul 21st 2007 8:52AM]

It won't burn up in the atmosphere?

[johnzilla @ Jul 21st 2007 9:20AM]

Man, talk about disappointment. I read the headline and instantly thought someone was going to try heaving a fridge into space FROM EARTH using some sort of magnetic acceleration device.

Now THAT would be news worthy of Engadget.

Basically, all they're saying here is that the space station is going to dump some garbage. BORING.

[Brendon @ Jul 21st 2007 9:55AM]

Some experts claimed the ball might return to earth someday, but their concerns were dismissed as "depressing".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGsvoPAD3lI

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 21st 2007 10:55AM]

How about his for a headline:

"Stuff heaved into space for decades, Engadget only now acquiring clue."

[Leonard Nimrod @ Jul 22nd 2007 11:45AM]

@ ROBOTHOUSE!!!!

Great post!
What a great, yet underrated show. I'm glad we have more episodes as movies coming soon. Im looking forward to new Futurama more than I was looking forward to my iPhone, which I love.

PS: Anyone who doesn't like the show can bite my shiny metal ass.

[Sam Daniel @ Jul 21st 2007 11:23PM]

asef

[DoctaDJones @ Jul 22nd 2007 8:21PM]

That dinkum thinkum computer on that space station better not start catapulting stuff at us.