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

Human nature?

[JonN]

This is another example to the classic problem humans have with looking towards the future. I don't need to list more than a few examples such as our own garbage problem, pollution, and a teenager doing drugs that will ruin the rest of his life. Although it is true that it is sometimes hard to predict what will happen, aren't we at an age (including the last 50 years) where we can somewhat guesstimate an end result?

Currently, and since its conception, the world's space programs have been based on the model that we can just leave shit we don't need in space. Where were the great minds of NASA to say "Wait...what is going to happen with the rocket parts we are leaving out there." We already knew of gravity and orbits, so the idea that perhaps the stuff would just fly away doesn't seem plausible.

Us as a race, and us as the most influential countries, must look to the future, and I do see improvements, however many issues as well. We do not live in a one generation world, this is a place which we must sustain indefinately (until we find a new host planet of course).

Turn the problem on its head...

[TripMaster Monkey]

...that's what the Bishop always said...

The key to solving this problem is to not look on it as a problem at all, but rather, as an opportunity. 'Space junk' is a bit of a misnomer....the only reason it's considered 'junk' is because no one has figured out a way to collect and reuse it. When they do, the name will change to something more along the lines of 'space salvage'.

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. Considerable time, money, and energy was invested is putting all this 'junk' into orbit, and before we blithely start to squander more time, money, and energy deorbiting them, perhaps we should consider the possibility of putting them to use where they are now.

Re:Turn the problem on its head...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Yeah, dude, I'm going to spend $10,000/kg to lift myself up to orbit to go and collect paint chips. They're so valuable, because, like, because they're there, man.

While I'm up there, I'm sure I won't cause any additional space junk, either.

Re:Turn the problem on its head...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

if you could somehow find a cheap way of bringing it back to earth un-damaged?

This phrase alone suggests that you failed to understand the concept. The point isn't to find a use for this stuff back on EARTH- but rather to find a use for it where it is, in orbit. Raw material for new rooms on the International Space Station perhaps?

Re:Turn the problem on its head...

[Junior J. Junior III]

You obviously don't understand the problem.

If it costs $10,000/kg to lift something to LEO, then how are you going to make any money off of salvaging this stuff? How many substances can you name that are worth the $10,000/kg needed to offset the cost of lifting a salvage collector into orbit?

How is the collector supposed to do its thing up there without having a mishap that will cause even more orbiting debris?

You can't use magnets to collect everything, it's not all magnetic debris. You can't physically catch stuff, it's too tiny and matching velocities with every little speck in order to capture them is unfeasible. Even if we managed to put up a space elevator to bring down the cost-to-orbit of a salvage collector, you still have a problem of matching vectors with every little piece of debris you want to capture.

There might be solutions for this problem, but salvaging it is not going to be economically feasible. Not unless you can convince a collector's market that the stuff is worth way more than it actually is, like with baseball cards.

No, the real value will be in clearing out a safe launch corridor, or providing that as a service -- not in the stuff you bring back.

IMHO

[Premo_Maggot]

I really think it matters if we use space as a garbage dump, there's still more space!

Breakdown by Country

[eldavojohn]

Space.com has a breakdown of responsibility by country of some of the larger debris in space.

And if you're really hardcore into space debris (it's hard to even type that without laughing), Orbital Debris Quarterly News is your magazine!

Space Janitor

[Anonymous Coward]

A big laser mop, that's all I need.

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.

Re:ball it up

[Sirfrummel]

Sounds like a game of Katamari!

Re:ball it up

[Illserve]

it's not so easy to collect them.

The real problem is the wildly different velocities of each different piece. These things are zooming along at bullet speeds, and some weigh more than an SUV. The problem is how one neutralizes these enormous differentials in kinetic energy.

If you tried to collect them in a ball by catching them, each new piece you intercepted would smack into it, creating 1000 new pieces of debris all with wildly random vectors of their own.

Perhaps if you had some kind of foamy goop that absorbed the energy... but it has to remain pliable in a frozen vacuum.

See it for yourself

[Guysmiley777]

Java based orbit tracker courtesy of NASA:

http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JTrack/3D/JTrack3 D.html

First thought

[metamatic]

"NASA Warns of Cluttered Space"--they've seen my office?

Re:Alright, let's get this out of the way...

[MadTinfoilHatter]

"The enforced labor works with the prison system on highways, why can't it work in space?"

Because the crime rate might skyrocket when people try to get thrown into jai^H^H^H space?

Ok. I don't think my karma can take any more bad puns... :-P

Looking towards the future

[Locke2005]

If the objects are in near-earth orbit, then at some point it the future their orbits should all decay into the earth's atmosphere, at which point they will incinerate themselves. Sounds like a self-correcting problem to me! The only question is: when? Anybody have any guesses on how long it will take all this junk to deorbit if we just leave it alone?

Re:Looking towards the future

[Rei]

LEO's pretty fast (hours to years), but for specifics, it really depends on the orbit and the object. A lightweight object with a large cross section at a 180km orbit may take only a day to reenter. A heavy object with a small cross section at 450 km may stay up for a decade.

Unfortunately (assuming my simulations are correct), orbits tend not to decay circularly. Rather, they tend to become more elliptical until the orbit finally intersects the atmosphere enough that it can't escape. Thus, you can't count on them being in too low of an orbit for you to collide with them as their orbit decays.

Now, GEO's a whole different story. Things in GEO tend to stay up, but they tend to not stay where you want them to stay ;)

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.

don't do anything until the first accident?

[hakan2000]

I'll make a wild guess that, not many people will care about this problem for a loooong while, until a disasterous space accident is caused by space debris. And then there'll be ridiculous attempts to alleviate the problem, such as a 'kyoto protocol' of space debris, which won't be ratified by guess who. Who's with me?

"Star Trek" Solution to Space Garbage

[reporter]

On 2005 August 24, Slashdot reported that Washington is working to develop laser cannons (i.e. "phasers").

On 2006 January 5, Slashdot reported that Washington is working to develop warp engines.

Perhaps, now would be the right time to work on developing shields. They could protect starships from both phasers and space garbage. Is anyone developing shields?

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.

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.

I like space junk

[gru3hunt3r]

I like space junk - it keeps the aliens away.

First off it makes us look like a poorer planet, I mean honestly who wants to conquer a home with a trans-am up on blocks in the front driveway and thousands of beer cans strewn about the lawn?? Sorry little green guys, we already stripmined this place!

But it's also practical -- long before the impending alien invasion can occur, they'll need to clean up the space junk before they can place their ships in near earth orbit. As soon as the space junk is gone, then there is really nothing to stop them from enslaving us and using us as a food source (mmm.. protein)

As far as i'm concerned space junk is one of the few things keeping us safe, that -- and of course the avian flu. (I'm harboring infected chickens in my cellar just in case one of those little green men shows up at my door)

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.

Solution:

[skintigh2]

Start grabbing them out of orbit and sell them on ebay to goldenpalace for $25,000 each. That way they can clean space and make a profit!