All these objects are witnesses of human activity in space and are as precious as archeological items buried several feet underneath us: like Egyptian mummies on Earth, it is important that we protect them against similar dangers for both their historical and scientific values which are beyond estimation (e.g. Perseverance and Ingenuity in the picture below, credits: NASA, JPL):
- Time and extreme environmental conditions such as micrometeoroids impacts, solar radiation, dust, wide temperature ranges and high pressure for which no design would be powerful enough;
- Inadvertent destruction and misappropriation as space will become more accessible to private enterprise. And because small items such as cameras, geology tools and tiny detachable parts are more prone to end as souvenirs for the space tourist than large rovers or landers, their vulnerability must be emphasized.
This catalogue, the most accurate to date, is a step in preserving them by establishing what’s actually out there and where it is precisely.