Space debris has long become a colossal problem, not one you can personally see clogging up your streets and drains outside, but one that could have serious impact on future space endeavours — particularly if you’re in the business of launching say, thousands of satellites.
It’s been 60 years since the Space Race started, and more than 5,550 rocket launches from Earth have left approximately 23,000 tracked objects remaining in space, not to mention the millions of bits and pieces floating around low Earth orbit known as “space junk.” About 9,600 satellites have been placed into Earth’s orbit to date, with about 5,500 still in space, and just 2,300 of those are functioning.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.