NASA Warns of Cluttered Space

Ant wrote to mention a National Geographic article looking at the cluttered nature of Near-Earth Orbit. From the article: "Since the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik I satellite in 1957, humans have been generating space junk. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking over 13,000 human-made objects larger than four inches (ten centimeters) in diameter orbiting the Earth. These include both operational spacecraft and debris such as derelict rocket bodies. 'Of the 13,000 objects, over 40 percent came from breakups of both spacecraft and rocket bodies,'Johnson said."

Comments

ball it up

[dirvish]

Seems like you would have to collect everything into a big ball and then leave the ball up there. I can't imagine dragging a bunch of junk down through the atmosphere. One big ball of junk would be much easier to dodge than thousands of small (probably equally deadly) chunks.

Track, Capture, Recycle?

[dada21]

I couldn't RTFA from my PDA. Are there private companies working on machines to try to capture these items? I'm sure it would be too expensive to ship back down to earth, but I wouldn't doubt that the raw materials might be worthy in a future moon or mars base.

It sounds like there might be some very valuable materials already in orbit, considering the cost to take up new materials on a launch. I'd love to see "the race to space" be over a bunch of competitive companies working to reclaim and reuse the junk.

Trapped Earth "doomsday" scenario

[Jtheletter]

One of the many shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot-with-tech scenarios that I have always been afraid of is the one in which through some, possibly minor at first, event in orbit our hundreds of satellites are smashed by debris and fan out smashing more in a chain reaction. The end result being that the earth is surrounded by a junk field that prevents any access to space because the probability of a fatal collision with junk is almost 1. Now, I'm sure there are a bunch of orbital physics geeks who can share their field knowledge and explain why that is unlikely or impossible (given different orbital heights and paths and decay of orbits into the atmosphere) currently, but I think it is still a wholly plausible future scenario when we have way more stuff in orbit than we do currently.

For example, the EU is now setting up it's own system of GPS satellites. How long until global politics force other countries like China, India, Korea, Japan, etc to put their own systems in place to ensure GPS access during troubled times? Plus communications continue to evolve towards satellite based systems for various reasons and as more countries reach 1st-class tech status they will want their own resources. The idea is that eventually without a specific system in place to mitigate risk humanity could doom itself to staying planetside for generations while we wait for junk to reenter the atmo, or be collected by robots or something.

Maybe now is the time to come up with some plans for the future to do more than just track space junk, and in fact move on to collecting, dispersing, or destroying it.

Good luck making it economical

[everphilski]

Certainly, some types of space salvage (derelict rockets, satellite fragments, etc.) will have a higher value than others (paint flecks, rocket slag, etc.), but even the lowliest dist speck will have value, for the simple reason that it is there.

I understand the argument from the standpont that it cost money to put the salvage into orbit. However "collecting" may wind up costing you more than the fragment itself weighs. Consider: Even if you make it up to LEO for free, you have to get to the item and match your position and velocity in the direction the space salvage is traveling to a degree where you (or your robot, whatever) can grab it. Of course you have to abide by the ideal rocket equation http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/r ktpow.html. Great. You got your first piece. Now you have to change heading and velocity to intercept piece #2. These vectors aren't all heading in the same direction at the same location. And they are only tracking about 13,000 pieces in NEO ... that's not very many pieces given the vast area of space there is! Consider 13,000 random objects on the surface of the earth, now extend it upwards a hundred meters, and add a volume of 1000m in the vertical direction. Long story short, you can't turn a profit given the fact that you need fuel to power the robot to collect this stuff. And given the fact that commercial ventures are starting to break the price point barrier - check out spaceX - 10k a kg will drop an order of magnitude in the next 10 years, easy.

Re:"Star Trek" Solution to Space Garbage

[ikkonoishi]

Just encase the space ship in a Faraday cage, stick two metals rods out of each end, and run a powerful magnetic field through them. Any metallic debris will hit at one of the poles which can be replaced rather easily. Sufficiently large debris must be shot with frik'n lasers and vaporized. Flying space monkeys can be warded off with banana cannons.

Planet ES

[Lord_Dweomer]

For any who are really interested in this, and want a peak at what the near future might hold in terms of space debris and cleaning it up...I HIGHLY recommend the anime series Planet ES. It is an anime about a group of space debris collectors who are essentially the trashmen of the near future where we have a functioning moonbase, space tourism, etc.

It is EXCELLENTLY written, and is great fun to watch even if you're not that interested in space trash. Great story, also deals a bit with global economics and what happens when you widen the development/financial gap between 1st and 3rd world countries even more by bringing the massive profits from space mining and tourism into play.