Please WATCH OUR VIDEO, SIGN OUR PETITION, and SHARE WITH YOUR FRIENDS - HELP US WIN our 2015-2016 Competition and CHANGE THE UNIVERSE!!!

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Scenario:

Imagine that 5 minutes from now space debris from a rocket that was launched 5 years ago hits 3 GPS satellites.  This is what could happen next:

• Debris from one of the satellites hits the international space station.
• Immediately, planes lose navigational connectivity to the GPS satellites and have to land – all air traffic is grounded.  
• Two planes crash during the emergency landings
• Drones in the northern hemisphere are unable to connect to the navigation and begin to fall out of the sky.
• A missile goes off course and hits an unintended target

The Problem:

Space trash is a massive problem and it's getting worse each day!

• Over 500,000 pieces of space trash larger than a marble and millions that are smaller than a marble – none of these can be tracked and are moving faster than 15,000 miles an hour – that’s fast enough to travel around the Earth once every two hours according to NASA!
• There are millions of microscopic pieces of trash in orbit that can cause even more damage and 20,000 pieces of trash that are larger than a softball.
• You may have heard on the CBS news in 2009 2 satellites collided – one was called Iridium 33 and the other was the Cosmos 2251 creating even more space trash causing a shutdown of the Iridium communication networks as well as 2 space stations barely making it out of the way!!!

The Challenge:

Experts are spending enormous amounts of time and money studying this idea - one with whom we spoke stated that there is "too much studying and not enough action".

Innovations being created today are largely focused on addressing existing Space Trash.  Many of these ideas are very expensive and one time use only.  Other promising ideas turned out to be in-feasible.  

When we started to research we were unable to find large groups focused 100% on the issues of space trash.  Because of this we were having trouble moving forward with innovating on these solutions.  We had contacts at Fermilab, through First Lego League, and through NASA but had trouble making progress.  We started to wonder why and did some brainstorming.

Our Epiphany:

We realized that there were three major reasons we were having trouble identifying people 100% focused on this issue:

• Lack of awareness about the problem
• Lack of investment in solutions
• Lack of a coordinated effort

Our Solution:

We decided that our best course of innovation was to help to solve these problems by raising awareness and helping to create a coordinated effort for our Government leaders to do three critical things:

• Require all entities that send objects into space to pay a tax that will support reduction of existing waste
• Require all entities that send objects to be 'zero-space-waste' from now on
• Impose penalties on any that do not comply with the new regulations

This is a solution to the problem of new space trash, enables the governments to create a new 'safe orbit' at a higher altitude, and enables the current space debris in the existing Lower Earth Orbit to enter Orbital Decay (or the death orbit) where that debris will eventually enter our atmosphere and burn up.

We created a 50 second video and posted it on the Thunderbots Facebook page and asked people to share the video – we hope to have this video viewed by thousands of people that will sign our petition.

The Outcome:

We will gather the signatures and send the attached letter to our Government Leaders encouraging their immediate attention and action to this issue.

Please sign by doing the following:

• Sign our petition and help to save the world!!!
• Like our video on Facebook!!!
• Share the link with your friends!!!

About us:

We are the Thunderbots, part of the First Lego League, a program focused on Robotics and Research.   We are a team of seventh and eight graders and for our research project for the 2016 season, we chose to focus on how to reduce existing space trash.