Spaceflight is a booming business. In 2020, the world’s first private manned space mission heralded a new era of increased accessibility to spaceflight. Since then, actors and civilians have been taken above the clouds, too—and it looks like things are only getting faster with the increase in economies centered on spaceflight itself, not only on launching GPS satellites. But there’s a layer of atmospheric debris that may prevent us from ever normalizing space flight if we don’t take our foot off the gas.
For years, humanity has been sending satellites into space for research, utility, and testing. We may have gotten too excited, though, in our historic haste to win the space race, because most satellites aren’t built to last very long—eighteen years at the most. Brian Roberts, robotic technologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, observed that the lower ten year lifespan is more commonly the optimum. In fact, although astroscientists rarely agree on their visions for the future, many business models abandon the trend of lengthening satellite lifespans in favor of producing cheaper spacecraft which profit more in the short run.
This mentality may be dangerous. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, over 2800 satellites currently orbit the earth. Most do so near the planet’s surface in a zone called Low Earth Orbit (LEO). However, also in or shortly above LEO are almost three times that number of old, nonfunctioning craft launched up to sixty years ago, floating about without purpose, corpses of once-fiery dreams to touch the sky.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and Space Surveillance Network (SSN) estimate 14,000 bodies floating in LEO, whizzing around at incredible speeds, occasionally colliding and spreading a net of detritus further and further over Earth’s surface. This effect compounds, and as more satellites are launched, more care must be taken to avoid existing debris, and more future debris is created when the satellites inevitably stop working. Humanity is shaking the dirty rug of its own ambition onto Earth’s atmosphere—and the problem is worsening.
In 1978, NASA’s orbital debris researcher Donald Kessler studied the formation of atmospheric junk fields. The increasing frequency of collisions between objects, he said, creates more tiny pieces of debris, which could increase faster than the asteroid belts in our solar system. By 2020, he said, a doomsday scenario could be in place: humanity might never be able to leave Earth again.
This hasn’t quite happened, but already, the International Space Station (ISS) is having to perform evasive maneuvers to dodge the shrapnel littering Earth’s skies. In 2020, the space station actively avoided wreckage at least three times. Although the crew was never endangered, critical emergency decisions were made at several junctures. “Something the size of a ChapStick could punch right through the space station,” says Rebecca Allen, an astrophysicist with the Swinburne Center of Astrophysics and Supercomputing. “Space debris is extremely dangerous.”
Awareness and counteraction for the problem, which Kessler advised in 1978, may be at an all-time low. Recently, Russia destroyed one of its own defunct satellites with a surface-to-air missile test that sent metal hurtling in fiery yet invisible arcs around the planet. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson dubbed the action “unthinkable,” stating that American, international, and Chinese space stations, as well as Russia’s own cosmonauts, were endangered.
Historically, Indian and Chinese missiles have also jeopardized international space missions. No less than a week before this outrage, NASA planned a maneuver to dodge debris from a Chinese anti-satellite test in 2007—which has since been implemented ahead of schedule, given the new trash network spawned by Russia. “The [Federation] recklessly conducted a destructive satellite test,” said Department of State spokesperson Ned Price, “… [which] has so far generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threaten the interests of all nations.
“Debris,” summarizes NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, “is getting worse!” Another leader in the space economy, LeoLabs co-founder Daniel Ceperley, drew attention to a concerning potential collision in October of 2020: “If [they] had hit, there could have been 25% more debris in an instant.” Finally, ESA’s Space Debris Office calculates over 128 million pieces less than one centimeter in diameter, too small to effectively track, racing one another through the atmosphere.
While much of this problem comes from past generations, prompt, prudent action is still required. Avarice destroys orbital economies as surely as planetside ones. Before long, GPS satellites may be threatened, telescoping may become exponentially more difficult, and SpaceX’s far-reaching Mars missions may become almost impossible. Despite all this, companies like Amazon and OneWeb continue to propose enormous satellite webs which may increase the number of functioning satellites by up to 600%. Wisdom is sorely lacking in a field which tries to stretch to the heavens; unless things change, it will be fire and metal raining down instead of gloriously ascending research satellites, and the cosmic ocean will become more littered than the terrestrial ones.
Sources:
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Image Credits:
Ducros, D. “The Automated Transfer Vehicle Burns up during a Guided and Controlled Reentry.” The European Space Agency, 2007, https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2002/04/The_Automated_Transfer_Vehicle_burns_up_during_a_guided_and_controlled_reentry.