You flotsam, you jetsam

The UK Space Agency has chosen seven firms to award with funding in the interest of tracking all the crap we’ve left in the sky.

You might be reading this on the back of watching Climate Change – The Facts, rubbing your face in despair and screaming, “We’ve done what now?!” – but come on, get over it. It’s not news that we’re a messy little lot, so let’s have a rummage through some of the bits and pieces we’ve had nyooming around up there.

In at three is a spatula fumbled by astronaut Piers Sellers while repairing a heat shield in 2006. “That was my favourite spatch,” he later quipped. “Don’t tell the other spatulas.” It’s not funny, mate.

In the same year, a camera came loose from Suni Williams while she dicked about with a solar array. “Uh, Suni, your camera is behind you. I hope it’s tethered because it looks like it’s passing underneath the arm and reflector,” reported Mission Control. “It’s not … the bracket came undone,” replied Williams, crushing the pass-agg mansplainer down in Houston.

Capping a shameful era for the glorified fly-tipper, NASA was back at it again the year after, punting a tank of ammonia the size of a fridge out the back of a space station. The big lad eventually returned to Earth in 2008, burning up into debris and pelting the ocean between Australia and New Zealand. What are we like, eh?