Space Junk in our orbit — threat or not?
By: Patryk Gwizdzil
Tags: Satellite Technology, Cosmos, Earth, Space, Pollution

Earth, the year 2021, our planet is slowly dying from the exploitation and pollution we humans generate. At the time of writing this article as well as in every moment that follows, the fate of our planet and ourselves is at stake. There has been a lot of talk about this recently, but are we aware of what is going on right over our heads in this matter?

Not many people seem to be aware of what the situation in the earth’s orbit looks like at any given moment.

But let’s start from the beginning…

SOME HISTORY

The first artificial satellite sent into space was the Russian Sputnik, its task was to send telemetry data to Earth. Based on them, the density of the atmosphere was measured and the propagation of radio waves in the ionosphere was analyzed.

The whole event took place in October 1957. It was this event that started the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Competition between the two countries lasted until 1975 during which time, twenty-four objects entered Earth orbit, twelve of which belonged to the United States, ten to the Soviet Union. The missing two were sent by the Canadians. This competiton has been ended by a joint manned mission by a Soviet-American ship called Soyuz-Apollo.

Since then, the number of objects sent into orbit has increased significantly from year to year. To date, the total number of all satellites sent into orbit is 9920, of which 6542 are still physically in space and only 3372 are fully functional. To compare, last year those numbers were around 5000 for all that are now in space and 2000 of which are fully funcitional…*

What does this prove? We have started to create another garbage dump in space and we have no intention of stopping…

WHAT EXACTLY IS SPACE JUNK?

As defined, junk is old or discarded articles that are considered useless or of little value.

Consequently, space junk is nothing more but unnecessary equipment and its debris left by man in space. Trash that was not worth bringing back to earth…

Space junk is seen in several different categories. They are usually distinguished by size. They can be small, millimeter-sized pieces of old equipment sent into space by man, but also entire satellites that have long been non-functional and are merely drifting in Earth’s orbit, slowly breaking apart to form more and more space junk of various sizes.

FILTH IN NUMBERS

If, after reading the first three parts of this article, you have begun to wonder what scale of the problem we are facing, below I bring you up to date on the current amount of space junk drifting in the orbit of our planet:

3372 operational satellites in Earth orbit

3170 dead satellites in Earth orbit

38,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 centimeters

130 million pieces of space junk larger than 1 millimetre

17,500 mph, speed of every piece, roughly 10 times the speed of a bullet

500,000 pieces of space junk bigger than one centimeter

These numbers alone should arouse great concern in us, considering the fact that our adventure with the conquest of space began less than 65 years ago. No more and no less testifies on what scale we use – not only our own ecosystem, but also the outer space.

It may be immeasurable, and there may not be evidence of any other life beyond planet earth and in space, but that doesn’t give us the right to exploit these areas unlimitedly in the way we do now. Until we change our thinking, we will not change anything, ever.

THREATS AND HOW TO GET RID OF THEM

At the moment, space junk poses little danger to space exploration itself or to humanity living on earth, but the situation is changing every day.

Larger debris is colliding with each other and other satellites, creating more and more space junk. The whole phenomenon is called the Kessler Syndrome, the meaning of which is explained in the next paragraph.

Nevertheless, space debris is a big problem for space stations and satellites orbiting the Earth. To avoid collisions the path of most debris must be constantly controlled by specially appointed for this purpose NASA units or various external companies. And that causes another generation of costs.

Collisions themselves do not happen very often, currently it is a problem of a sporadic nature. The last case of collision occurred in 2009 when a larger piece of space debris collided with a satellite and led to its destruction (which of course led to the generation of another amount of space junk)

Fortunately, scientists and related outside companies, under the command of the United Nations, are working to try and solve the problem. Any company that owns dead satellites currently orbiting the earth has 25 years to get rid of them from space. Will this be a short enough period of time to prevent the dead satellites from turning into more space junk?

At the moment, two methods are being developed to fight debris in space. The first is to use a giant harpoon with a magnetic net that will catch the satellite and pull it down into the Earth’s atmosphere, burning it as it falls to the ground.

The second solution is to use a laser that will heat up the object to increase its atmospheric drag so that it falls out of orbit.

However, this does not change the fact that both methods are only effective for larger objects such as dead satellites. The problem of smaller debris which there are most in our orbit, is still an open question to be solved, but at the moment nothing promises to change.

KESSLER SYNDROME

In 1978, NASA scientist Donald Kessler came up with a thesis about a chain reaction caused by too much debris in space.

According to this thesis, more and more debris will collide with each other, creating new debris, until the Earth’s orbit becomes inaccessible to humans. This is a very disturbing but realistic prediction, which one day may come true.

THE SH*T GOT REAL

What would you say about 50,000 new giant satellites orbiting the Earth over the next few decades? That’s the idea being considered by two of the largest companies, Amazon and SpaceX, explaining it as a desire to make the Internet accessible anywhere on Earth. A seemingly noble action, but is it really necessary?

SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are among several planned mega constellations of satellites © SpaceX (CC BY-NC 2.0), via Flickr

50,000 new satellites around the earth will change into millions of new collision opportunities, making attempts to deal with space debris nearly impossible.

Prudent or frivolous? Decide for yourself.

WE STARTED WITH EARTH, WE WILL END WITH SPACE

In the previous paragraphs you could see with your own eyes how serious the problem of space debris is already, and how great the danger of its presence in space is, not only for the astronauts themselves, but also for our future and development.

The collision of even a small piece of space debris with a working satellite can lead to its complete destruction, and thus critically affect such fields of infrastructure as navigation, satellite communications, reconnaissance and national security.

It is also necessary to consider the undeniable fact that man is simply littering another space, this time beyond the planet. In a few hundred years we may be confronted with the fact that there will be a huge garbage dump in space, which will make it much more difficult for mankind to carry out space missions, explorations and reconnaissance. Are we really ready to slow down the development of our species in this way?