10 strangest objects floating in space

Indian Express

2 days ago

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in 1957, it marked the beginning of humanity's presence beyond Earth. But in the decades since, we've done more than just launch satellites and scientific instruments into orbit — we've sent art, ashes, accidents, and outright oddities.
Some objects were placed in space on purpose, symbolic gestures meant to inspire or amuse. Others were lost by accident, abandoned or forgotten during ambitious missions. Still more were part of bizarre Cold War schemes or questionable experiments that never quite panned out.
Let's start with the obvious – astronauts pee. But when you're in a cramped spacecraft hurtling around the Earth, waste disposal isn't as simple as flushing it away.
For decades, urine produced aboard spacecrafts were simply released into space. Once expelled, it would instantly freeze into a cloud of tiny, glittering crystals — a twinkling, golden mist visible through the portholes. Some astronauts have even described the sight as beautiful.
More recently, the International Space Station installed a high-tech filtration system to recycle urine into drinking water, a more sustainable approach to bodily waste in orbit.
In 2018, SpaceX decided that a boring concrete test payload just wouldn't cut it for the maiden voyage of its Falcon Heavy rocket. Instead, Elon Musk launched his own cherry-red Tesla Roadster into space, complete with a spacesuit-wearing dummy named 'Starman' in the driver's seat.
Originally aimed at a Mars orbit, the Tesla overshot and now loops around the sun every 557 days. It's become a sort of cosmic billboard for SpaceX, and you can track it live at whereisroadster.com. According to the website, its travelled the equivalent of all the world's roads 91 times without ever stopping for a recharge.
Not all space toys are left behind by accident. In 2011, NASA launched the Juno probe toward Jupiter — and with it, three tiny Lego figurines made from aluminium to withstand the brutal radiation of the gas giant.
The minifigs represent Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods; Juno, his wife; and Galileo Galilei, the first person to observe Jupiter's largest moons. The inclusion was a collaboration with the Lego Group aimed at inspiring young people to engage with science and space.
Hurtling through interstellar space, the twin Voyager spacecraft carry one of humanity's most ambitious attempts at cosmic communication: a pair of gold-plated phonograph records.
The records, curated by a team led by Carl Sagan, include greetings in 55 languages, recordings of a baby crying and a heartbeat, the sound of waves, and music from across human history — including Bach, Beethoven, and Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode.'
There are also 155 images encoded into the disc, showing everything from city streets to diagrams of DNA. The records are meant for any alien civilisations that might stumble upon them.
It seems only right that Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, should find his final resting place among the stars. Though previous attempts to launch his ashes into space either failed or ended in atmospheric reentry, a successful launch finally took place in January 2024.
This time, a portion of Roddenberry's ashes made it beyond the Earth-Moon system and into deep space, where they will drift forever.
We've left a lot of junk up there — and it's starting to get dangerous.
Space debris includes everything from dead satellites and spent rocket boosters to flecks of paint and broken antennae. Some pieces travel at over 17,000 mph, fast enough to cause catastrophic damage on impact. The problem has grown so severe that experts warn of the potential for 'Kessler syndrome' — a chain-reaction of collisions that could make Earth's orbit unusable for decades.
In 1969, artist Forrest Myers devised a plan to smuggle art onto the Moon aboard Apollo 12. NASA wasn't interested, so Myers covertly handed off a tiny ceramic tile etched with artwork from six famous artists — including Andy Warhol — to an insider working on the lunar lander.
The tile, dubbed the 'Moon Museum,' was reportedly installed without NASA's knowledge. Warhol later claimed his contribution was just his initials. But the etching looks very much like a crude drawing of male genitalia.
In 2008, astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper was performing maintenance outside the ISS when she lost her grip on a toolbag. The 30-pound bag, filled with grease guns and a scraper, drifted slowly away, becoming one of the most expensive pieces of space litter in history.
Amateur astronomers spotted it from Earth in the weeks that followed, and skywatchers could track it using satellite monitoring websites.
In the Cold War era, the US feared Soviet attacks on underwater communication cables. The solution? Launch 480 million copper needles into space to create an artificial ionosphere for bouncing radio signals around the globe.
The 1963 experiment, called Project West Ford, mostly failed. Most of the needles eventually fell back to Earth and burned up — but not all. Clumps of these tiny metallic slivers still orbit the Earth today, serving as a strange reminder of just how far Cold War paranoia was willing to go.
Orbiting Earth and spinning once every minute is a mysterious 60-foot-long object known as J002E3. First detected in September 2002 by an amateur astronomer as it drifted through the constellation Pisces, the object was initially mistaken for an asteroid. But further analysis revealed it was not natural — it was built by humans. Experts now believe it's likely the long-lost third stage of the Apollo 12 rocket, which launched to the Moon in 1969 and was thought to have vanished into deep space.