Millions of Space Junks May Worsen – St George News

ST. GEORGE – Nearly infinite ring of space debris swirls around the earth, creating what NASA calls a "rubble problem," a life-threatening situation for astronauts as debris crashes into space shuttle windows or splits between cables. Therefore, it is important to keep track of the 18 million pounds of waste in orbit around the Earth.

In the beginning

The artifacts have only been manufactured in space since 1957, the year of the inauguration of the Russian Sputnik satellite. This means that everything has been presented in some 5,400 launches over the past six decades, according to the Space Operations Report of the European Space Agency published in January 2018.

Since the beginning of the space age, more than 8,600 satellites have been placed in orbit. Of approximately 4,700 of those still in orbit, only 1,800 are operational, leaving 2,900 dead satellites in targetless orbits and adding to the more than 21,000 objects currently tracked and cataloged by NASA.

What is junk food from space?

The term "space debris" refers to abandoned spacecraft or the upper stages of launchers, multiple charge carriers and debris projected during explosions and collisions or released when a spacecraft separates from its launch. . vehicle. It also includes rocket engine solid waste and tiny paint stains released by thermal stress or the collision of tiny particles.

How many is there?

Using a terrestrial radar, the US Space Network currently monitors approximately 21,000 objects larger than 4 inches. Nothing indicates that the debris will disappear on their own. In fact, the higher the altitude, the longer the debris remain in Earth's orbit.

In addition to traceable objects, there are 750,000 so-called "flying bullets", fragments of less than half an inch, according to NASA, and 150 million fragments of less than one millimeter that do not can not be tracked from Earth.

The orbitale Indy 500

All these debris gravitate at a maximum speed of 17,500 km / h, which is fast enough for a relatively small piece of debris to damage a satellite or spacecraft.

In fact, according to NASA, paint stains would have damaged a number of shuttle windows that had to be replaced.

Considering that orbital debris collides with another object in space at a speed of 6 km / s, 10 times faster than a bullet, collisions involving even small debris consume a considerable amount of energy.

High speed space collisions

Surprisingly, with all this space debris moving around an orbital high-speed race track, there have been very few disastrous collisions.

However, a collision of this type occurred in 1996 when a French satellite was damaged after a collision with a French rocket that exploded 10 years earlier.

Another collision involved a deceased Russian satellite that collided with a functioning US commercial satellite, which destroyed the satellite and added more than 2,000 separate objects to the space debris stack.

Two years earlier, China had blown up an old weather satellite with the help of a missile, which had projected 3,400 objects in the congested ring that NASA regularly monitors.

In total, more than 500 collisions, ruptures or fragmentations have already been reported, resulting in nearly 18 million pounds of synthetic material that gravitates around the Earth at any given time, with the highest concentration at about 500 miles above the Earth.

This is where the European Space Agency's now-defunct environmental satellite, which is about the size of an 8-tonne Greyhound bus, presents a high risk of collision.

Who does it belong to?

The international guidelines recommend that operators remove spacecraft or satellites from their low Earth orbit, about 1200 miles above the Earth's surface, within 25 years of the end of the satellite mission.

Despite these recommendations, only 60% of missions do so, according to the report of the European Space Agency.

Orbital hazards

The volume of debris collected on the low Earth orbit presents a clear and present danger, warns the European Space Agency, and catastrophic events have occurred over the past six decades.

Catastrophic risks are not isolated from equipment or objects – they also pose a risk to human life.

The case in point is several close calls involving the International Space Station. From 1998 to 2012, the orbital facilities performed 15 avoidance maneuvers to avoid collisions with space debris. On four occasions during its 19 years of existence, objects were identified too late and the station's crews were forced to evacuate.

Why does not junk food appear in satellite images?

Many have wondered why these objects are not visible on satellite photos, and the size is reduced. The majority of objects are too small, from the size of a football to a grain of paint, to be photographed by satellites orbiting hundreds of kilometers away.

To put this in perspective, the largest human-made object in space is the International Space Station at a point slightly wider than 357 feet, while the distance across the center of the Earth is near 42 millions of feet, or about 7,900 miles.

Kessler syndrome

Kessler syndrome is a 1978 theory proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in which he describes an "autonomous cascade collision of space debris" in low Earth orbit, where two objects collide in space generate more debris, which then collides with other objects, creating even more waste until all in low Earth orbit becomes an impassable fortress of ultra-fast moving objects.

At that time, anything that goes into orbit would be confronted with "unprecedented risks of head-to-head bombardment," according to Space Safety magazine.

Kessler predicted that a "debris belt" would be created, in which the debris density would be so great that random collisions would be inevitable and, as collisions would increase, the volume of debris would increase, thus increasing the number random collisions.

The future if nothing changes

With increasing congestion, the risks and costs of space exploration for future generations will only increase. Any hope of launching something in space will probably require rockets capable of penetrating more accurately into a layer of debris, as well as higher fuel costs that would be needed for avoidance maneuvers to protect the spaceship against small debris.

"The low Earth orbit may even become impracticable," NASA says.

Things can even get worse. Many companies, including One Web, Boeing, SpaceX and Samsung, are planning to create proverbial "mega-satellite constellations" to bring Internet access to the globe. This plan involves putting more than 10,000 satellites into orbit. September 2018 report from NASA.

The "RemoveDebris" experience

As part of a $ 19 million program, a spacecraft equipped with a technology capable of eliminating space debris in orbit was launched as part of a 19-year program. millions of dollars. The module is about the size of a washing machine that weighs about 220 pounds and is equipped with a harpoon, a net and a side sail.

The spacecraft was released from the International Space Station on June 20 and moved away from its orbital outpost to begin its experimental mission, offering scientists the opportunity to test various functions of the spacecraft.

The first test in October was to launch a "CubeSat", tiny boxes in orbit around the earth, with a volume of about 61 cubic inches and weighing less than 3 pounds. Once the tiny orbiter has moved away, the aircraft ejected the net to attempt to capture the object.

In December, a second test will be launched to analyze the vision-based navigation technology developed by Airbus in Toulouse, France, using a set of 2D cameras and a 3D laser scanning technology to track a second test item while 39, it is away from the main Satellite.

In February 2019, another experiment will take place. The satellite will send a pen-size harpoon into a panel that will deploy from the main spacecraft.

In March, the capabilities of the sailing dredge on the spacecraft will be tested. The dredge is designed to accelerate the process of deorbiting the satellite by slowing it down, allowing it to desorb in 10 weeks compared to the 100 weeks that would be needed without sail.

"The sail produces a lot of drag, so the spacecraft slows down and its orbit disintegrates much faster than without a sail," Space Guglielmo Aglietti, director of the Surrey Space Center in the UK, told Spaceguard. .com.

In another program called "Space Debris Removal", NASA is proposing to project atmospheric gases into space in order to destabilize the orbit of debris and to send them back in free fall on Earth, where they will be burned in our atmosphere.

Other technologies are also being developed to cope with the orbital jungle that revolves around our blue marble, but this area is unexplored territory, so any real progress will take time. Even if the satellite launches stopped completely, the problem could persist for a few hundred years or more, according to a 2011 NASA study.

The more space debris there, the harder it will be to throw anything into space. If nothing is done, some scientists believe that humans could very well be trapped on Earth – a prison of our own design.

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