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The Growing Mess of Orbital Debris Threatens Satellites, Space Missions - and your Roof
As WIRED SCIENCE's Adam Rogers mulls launching his own satellite (you can watch the process here), he's got more than just the half-billion dollar price tag to worry about. There's also the vast gyre of human-made space trash floating around in orbit, which poses a growing threat to satellites, manned space missions and even us down here on Earth.
In fifty years of shooting objects into space, we've generated a huge amount of what's known as orbital debris: everything from spent rocket stages and burned-out satellites to the shrapnel created when such castoffs collide or explode. The list even includes lost items like lens caps, a camera, a glove and a putty knife dropped by spacewalking astronauts.
The US government's Space Surveillance Network currently counts more than 17,000 bits of debris larger than 10 centimeters - big enough to cause serious damage to a satellite or craft like the International Space Station. NASA estimates there are over 100,000 more between 1 and 10 cm in diameter - and if you throw in particles smaller than a centimeter, the figure is in the tens of millions. Those numbers jumped up in January of this year, when China fired a missile into one of its defunct satellites, smashing it into more than 2,000 fragments the size of a tennis ball or larger. (The US and Soviet Union ran their own tests of anti-satellite weapons from 1968 to 1986 that also generated countless shreds of orbiting scrap metal.)
What's the big deal about trash that tiny? All that junk isn't just floating around - it's zooming through space at staggering speeds. Debris in low Earth orbit travels at an average speed of 21,600 miles per hour. At that velocity, the impact of a 10 cm chunk of aluminum is comparable to 25 sticks of dynamite. Even a 1 millimeter scrap hits like a rifle bullet. "Things that size won't kill a spacecraft, but they can cause a lot of trouble," says Dr. William Ailor, director of the Air Force-affiliated Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies. They could damage sensitive gear like the Hubble Space Telescope's mirrors, or protective sun shields. A window on a space shuttle was once cracked when a stray flake of paint smacked into it, Ailor points out.
Sure, there's a lot of room in space, and such collisions are so far exceedingly rare. But they do happen. In 2005, an engine from a 31-year-old derelict American rocket and a fragment from an exploded Chinese rocket - each about the size of a microwave oven - slammed into each other. In 1996, a knapsack-sized piece of an Ariane rocket smashed into a French satellite at 31,500 mph, breaking off a stabilizing boom. Space agencies have had to make in-flight adjustments to the course of space shuttles and various satellites several times in recent years to steer them clear of threatening orbital debris.
Space junk could conceivably also do damage down here on Earth. Many of those thousands of bits of debris will eventually be pulled down out of orbit by our planet's gravity. In fact, according to NASA, that happens about once a day. Most burn up in the atmosphere, or fall into oceans, deserts or other unpopulated areas. But in 1997, a 550-pound piece of a Delta 2 rocket crashed down in the front yard of Texas farmhouse. And just last May, an orange-sized chunk of stainless steel alloy that may have been a satellite fragment careened through the roof of a home in New Jersey.
Scientists and governments of the dozens of nations with satellites in orbit are increasingly concerned. The US and other major spacefaring nations have developed guidelines to limit debris creation, by doing things like building systems into satellites that will jettison propellant left over at the end of the machine's useful life to eliminate the chance of explosion. Last June, a United Nations panel adopted similar guidelines to cover the many smaller countries that are planning to launch satellites.
Still, such measures will at best only stabilize the problem. No one is likely to clean up the space trash that's already there. What few solutions have so far been proposed - from debris-zapping ground-based lasers to using robots to attach rocket engines that could push defunct spacecraft out of orbit - are too technically difficult or expensive.
Depending on how high up it is, a piece of space junk can remain in orbit for decades or even centuries. "What's up there now is going to be there for a long time," says Ailor. That means more and more of those castoff bits and pieces are bound to collide with each other, generating still more dangerous debris.
Astronauts, pack your flak jackets.
18 Posts
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11.14.07 11:50 AM PST
GARY CARROLL
THAT'S VERY STUNNING, IT'S ENOUGH MAN IS KILLING EARTH. LET'S GO TO OUTER SPACE. INSTEAD OF MAN LOOKING FOR ANOTHER PLANET, HE SHOULD CLEAN UP WHAT HE'S GOT.
11.15.07 9:50 AM PST
NICKI B
NOBODY CARES ABOUT CLEANING UP AFTER THEIRSELF ANYMORE. YOU WOULD THINK THAT ALL THESE TIMES WE HAVE SENT PEOPLE TO SPACE JUST TO DIRTY IT THEY WOULD HAVE A CLEAN UP CREW. ITS SAD THAT THE HUMAN RACE NEVER THINKS OF WHAT THEY ARE DOING & HOW IT IS GOING TO EFFECT US IN THE FUTURE!
11.15.07 10:25 AM PST
Geri Cooney
How do we go about cleaning it up? Invent a space vacuum cleaner? How about an orbiting magnet? This sounds like a good essay assignment for our youth. Let's get them thinking so they can be encouraged to pursue a career in science and develop a solution.
11.15.07 4:24 PM PST
Rina Jollie
Trashing is the American way, may be not. May be the engineering way. Look at the landfills we are leaving our children. All the rusting pipelines under sea. Pollution in the sea. Pollutants in the air. Disposable everything. Are they really disposable? And now the orbiting debris. We need to leave the nature in the state we found it. Re-absorb and re-cycle everything thing regardless of the cost. When will upstart, feel good, smart engineers and us graduates will learn that quick design and claim of creating something new, is not really all that good unless we can make sure it is done in a environmentally friendly way.
12.18.07 11:14 AM PST
J Gorkos
Hasn't Wired's Nextfest presented several of the solutions in the past few years for dealing with orbital debris? I seem to recall that the space tether idea was capable of moving space trash into the atmosphere at an angle that would burn it up rather than allow it to crash into someone's home. We wait until the problem is large and ugly before thinking that perhaps we should look at our actions. Engineers and designers know that what they create will also produce waste. Perhaps there needs to be another step in the process that holds accountability for these byproducts?
4.12.08 8:17 PM PDT
A Hawkins
In 2004, the FCC required that all US launched satellites sent into space after March 18, 2002 are required to be sent into graveyard (unused) orbits after they no longer become useful, in order for the US satellite communication companies to have the FCC permit, which still leaves them in space, and much of them might degrade into the lower orbits, but it is a step in the right direction. And there are many government and inter-governmental programs that are working on this issue, such as the UN's COUPUOS, The IADC, US Orbital Debris Program Office, JAXA and other space debris programs of other countries, so this definitely not a new issue. But US government money might be better served by not spending hundreds of billions of dollars "trying to hit a bullet with another bullet"(anti-ballistic missile weaponry) and planning to weaponize space("Brillant Pebbles" program), and instead trying to figure out a practical way how to reenter all of that space debris into earth's atmosphere so that humans can have a peaceful future in space.
9.18.08 8:27 AM PDT
mith
it is cool
11.6.08 7:08 PM PST
Gabriel a
but is there a way to clean up the crap
11.7.08 6:27 AM PST
Shadow Simmons
There has to be a way to clean it up.
12.27.08 6:18 AM PST
William Brown
The nations that launch rockets,satellites, and astronauts spend huge sums of money and take extra precautions in every stage of the space process except the last. It seems to me that they have been getting away with environmental destruction and contamination laws for years.The U.S.A. should set the standard or bar and address these issues and others as soon as possible before it comes full circle...The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was a good show!Get involved.Save the Planets! Wall-E
1.29.09 10:28 AM PST
Maddy
This sucks. we need to clean this stuff up...fast.its going to kill us all! RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
1.29.09 10:31 AM PST
Candlepuff
OMG, WTF?!? this is totally stupid, i mean, what kind of a nation leaves all this crap out in space for other people to clean up? There is NO upside to this situation, and I doubt there ever will be, unless there is an environmentally friendly way to clean it all up, which could take years. i mean, who knows, your kids could be the ones who end up cleaning all the space junk. So suck on that.
1.29.09 10:35 AM PST
Candlepuff
WTF? Wall-E? intelligent comment, you dumbass :P
1.29.09 10:36 AM PST
Lauren Boggie
I think that we should clean up the orbital debris. Although it is kinda cool when it crahses in to Texas.
1.29.09 10:41 AM PST
:D
what the fudge!?! i <3 that phrase!
4.21.09 12:10 PM PDT
babyboo_14
ha:)
4.24.09 10:02 AM PDT
Rozy
thats some good info thanks but how do we stop that kind of stuff....do omething about China l.o.l
7.13.09 5:11 PM PDT
Mechanii
I don't see any way to clean all that crap up. I don't think you can create a vacuum in space cause there's no air out there. . and all the metal they use for space stuff are actually non-magnitizable, like alluminum. I've heard rumors about an elementary kid proposing an ingenious way of how to solve this problem though.
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