Low Earth Orbit Junk Yard Nearly Full

vlado4 writes "The New York Times has up an article on the amount of space junk in Earth Orbit. According to NASA officials, the amount of stuff we've put into LEO is at critical levels. Additionally they have great graphics of the nearly 1000 new pieces resulting from testing the new Chinese anti-satellite weapon, as well as the damage to Hubble's solar array. The litter is now so bad that, even if space-faring nations refrained from further interference, collisions would continue to create more clutter just above our atmosphere. Space debris appear to be a difficult problem to deal with and may hinder future space exploration."

Comments

No problem

[2.7182]

We'll just have the Chinese clear it out with their new laser death beam things.

Re:No problem

[rblancarte]

You can see that the stress of all the debris is having a bad effect on astronauts already.

RonB

Re:No problem

[pe1chl]

It is of course very easy to point at the Chinese for shattering a satellite into a thousand pieces, but don't forget that the US has their share of stupid mistakes as well.
For example, in 1963 the US Military launched 480 million tiny needles into orbit (project West Ford), to see if they could be used to reflect radio signals.
That did not work well, but the needles remained in orbit for years.
And if scientists would not have been very opposed to it, they probably would have launched even more to see if the idea would work.

Also, it is difficult to say that space is "full" of junk. The LEO area has such a large volume that even hundres of millions of junk particles at a uniform distribution still means they are all many kilometers apart. So what is "full"?

Re:No problem

[rucs_hack]

"We'll just have the Chinese clear it out with their new laser death beam things."

that will never work unless they can breed sharks that can survive in space..

Re:No problem

[pe1chl]

One reason this is not so simple, is that there is so much space to vacuum. You will not find much junk by just vacuuming (especially in the vacuum of space)...
Then there is the problem that speeds are very high. A particle in a different orbit than your Roomba will probably go right through it, instead of being properly processed.

Re:No problem

[Zephyros]

And then when it's got everything, we can aim it at whomever we want and switch it from "suck" to "blow"...

Re:No problem

[dpilot]

I've sometimes mused about a big hunk of aerogel in orbit. I suspect that you don't really need to catch or stop things, just slow them down. If these pieces of junk could just be persuaded to drop perigee down into the 100 mile range, then atmospheric decay would help out.

Re:No problem

[mfrank]

Just increase the rate of global warming. The warmer atmosphere will expand further into space, and all the junk will re-enter and burn up.

Also, we can schedule a date and time where everybody exhales simultaneously. That'll help.

Re:No problem

[dpilot]

It's the old "Space is BIG!" problem. But the nearly meaningful adder to the aerogel idea would be to station some blocks of it ahead of and behind valuable things, notably the ISS. (If you stationed any around the HST, you'd also want to be able to move it when you wanted to look in that direction. Even this idea still has trouble with the "Space is BIG!" problem, but at least you're trying to protect a smaller space. Obviously it would be necessary to form the aerogel on-orbit, presuming that's possible.

Look at the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Space debris appear to be a difficult problem to deal with and may hinder future space exploration.

Sure, but it also prevents stuff from comig in. Things like alien landers, etc. Or in an earth hostility only mode, it is a cheaper, and more effective, vresion of the Star Wars defense. Put more up there and let it shield us.

Solution

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Launch a new ball of garbage into orbit to propel the old ball of garbage away from earth. It's foolproof.

How bad are we?

[SQLz]

Not only are we destroying our own environment, our planet is surrounded by floating trash.

Re:How bad are we?

[rblancarte]

Does this make us the hillbilly's of the galaxy?

What's next, a space station on cinder blocks?

RonB

Re:How bad are we?

[Intron]

Not really. Decay time due to drag for LEO is fairly short. Debris in orbits below 300 km (where ISS lives) falls in less than 30 days. Debris up by the Hubble can stay up for years, but will fall eventually. Here is a chart of orbital decay vs. altitude.

Re:How bad are we?

[careysub]

Not really. Decay time due to drag for LEO is fairly short. Debris in orbits below 300 km (where ISS lives) falls in less than 30 days. Debris up by the Hubble can stay up for years, but will fall eventually. Here is a chart of orbital decay vs. altitude.

This is correct. At low enough altitudes space debris does not cause a run-away debris scenario. This point was made in the New York Times article - if the Chinese had conducted their test at the ISS orbital altitude there would be no long term problem (just a medium term one for the ISS).

In fact drag automatically clears debris below about 700 km, eventually, but not above that altitude. There was a good article on this a year ago in Science: "Risks in Space from Orbiting Debris" by Liou and Johnson (20 January 2006: Vol. 311. no. 5759, pp. 340 - 341). They published a debris vs altitude chart for 2004, 2104, and 2204 showing that (assuming nothing else is launched into space), the existing debris cloud would be entirely cleared below 400 km in 100 years, and at least reduced below today's density between 400 and 700 km. Above that altitude the density keeps climbing century after century. By far the worst hazard is between 800 km and 1050 km.

This limits the hazard to a certain band of orbital altitudes, a fact not brought out in the news article. It isn't a denial of space by any means, but it is a significant restriction on usable orbits.

It will counter global warming

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

All these debris collide with one another and create fine dust covering the earth. It will reflect just enough sunlight to reduce the amount of absorbed radiation to counter the global warming. What a great relief! Last momement reprieve, brought to you by Frank Merrywell.

But seriously...

[Panaqqa]

This is a HUGE problem. Considering that kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity, think about how much damage even a small chip of paint can do at orbital speeds (low Earth orbit = approx. 5 miles per second). Then think of a 2 lb. chunk of metal at the same speed (8 times the speed of a rifle bullet).

Right off the top of my head I can't think of a feasible way of beginning to clean this up. Perhaps large orbital superconducting magnets (easy to maintain cryo temperatures in space) for the ferrous stuff, but what about ceramics and all the other junk?

This has the potential to make what is usually the safest part of space travel (sitting there in orbit) the most dangerous part, unlike the historical danger zones of liftoff and reentry.

Re:But seriously...

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>anything it would collide with would also be moving at a comparable speed

Comparable speed but not comparable velocity: if something in polar orbit hits something in equatorial orbit, grief will ensue.

Already Solved The Problem

[compact_support]

Didn't somebody design a really cheap system of kamikaze satellites that would grapple the dangerous pieces and de-orbit them into the atmosphere? By really cheap I mean ~10,000 dollars. Surely we could put a couple of those on the ISS in case it looked like something was coming for it. I know it's expensive to launch the things, but AFAIK they're about the size of a propane tank for a BBQ and could be launched in vast numbers on a single rocket. The space is so large we only need to worry about the stuff in the space we WANT to be in or go through. All the geosynchronous stuff is in a much higher orbit, so we only need to worry about the stuff in LEO and the stuff going through it. It shoudn't be a problem to plot a course through it, and we can clear the orbits as we go.

I have a radical idea

[realmolo]

NASA needs to cut a deal with Blizzard. Make each of the pieces of "space junk" an ultra-rare item in World of Warcraft that the players have to go and collect themselves.

The problem will be solved in 3 months.

saweet

[esobofh]

Soon those saturn bastards will envy OUR ring!!

Re:Ok, didn't Nasa Tell teh Astronaughts not to fl

[multipartmixed]

> how much is human waist?

Depending on the human, somewhere around around 32 inches.

Hafrumph!!!

[StressGuy]

Republican

{...ducks...}

Re:Heh

[operagost]

I anticipate that there will be a huge demand for brave space pilots to obliterate this menace. Therefore, I have already begun training on an advanced debris-elimination trainer software using the latest vector graphics technology. I realize that space is not two dimensional and the "hyperspace" technology has not yet been developed, but I will be prepared in advance once our brilliant scientists make space junk elimination possible. In addition, I will have a head start on blasting those flying saucers that will be piloted by our vile Chinese nemeses.

Re:Typical

[Shiptar]

Global warming. I burn all my garbage, vote republican and bought a fortress on a mountain.

The sooner I get rid of you guys the better.

Killing yourself is never the answer, killing everyone else is a better and less selfish solution.

Re:How can you blame them?

[drinkypoo]

A country that can't keep from polluting their own land, how can we expect them to not pollute space..?

Uh, have you looked around the US? I personally live in a valley in Northern California that used to be a sort of paradise in which the locals (Pomo "Indians") used to regularly live over 100 years due to their diet and lifestyle. Today the lake is horribly polluted with mercury and agricultural run off. The lake is called Clear Lake, and it was when white men first showed up here. Today it is about the same color as pea soup and frankly you can't see much further through it most days.

This is pretty much the story of the US. Some people were living in harmony with nature, doing controlled burns on a regular basis to provide stewardship of the land. (In fact my lady and I were just looking at a seed catalog and found a plant that said "to germinate, burn several inches of pine needles above the seeds" etc etc.) Then some white guys showed up, killed and enslaved lots of them, and cut down their oaks (depriving them of a major staple) in order to plant crops or grow cattle. Then the government gets involved, and kills most of the rest of them. We have an island up here now known as Bloody Island because the army came through and massacred all but a small handful of members of one band. The island is up the road from where I work in a tribal casino. Next the government would take further action to make sure they couldn't maintain their old way of life; besides granting all their land to some other white people, they actually paid people to plant walnut trees. Walnuts are tasty but they provide nothing like the nutrition of oak acorns.

You are sadly deluding yourself if you think China is any different from the US. They're just behind. And they're catching up rapidly.

Re:Typical

[Red Flayer]

Of course as soon as someone would have suggested that we find a way to clean up the space junk early on, they would have been derided for getting in the way and worrying about petty concerns.

Bah, it's hubris to think that mankind has put enough stuff in LEO to affect the entire orbital space.

Furthermore, what's to say that natural sources don't put more space junk in LEO than human processes?

And who cares if we've "filled up" LEO -- surely technological advances will enable us to deal with the complications as they arise.

And why should we (the US) have to bear the biggest burden of reducing the trash in LEO, when developing nations (those without a space program) get off scott free? It's not like we're the major contributor or anything.

Besides, the jury is still out... plenty of independent* scientists dispute the findings of this study, and we should take no action until there is consensus.

*Independent: funded by the "other side" of the interested parties

Re:Not far off

[buckeyeguy]

So you're saying the Shuttle will be up on blocks. OK. Wonder how much a really big Trans Am decal would cost?

Re:Collect it, yes. Throw it away, no.

[Rei]

Because those "chowderheads" are aware of the facts that:

1) We have no space tugs
2) Space tugs still cost money to operate (ion engines still use fuel, just less of it)
3) All craft break, even tugs, and in-space maintenence is ungodly expensive
4) Due to widely differing debris orbits and the need to match your target's orbit, it could take an ion engine years *per particle*.
5) The stuff is seen as junk for a reason.
6) There is no in-space forge, either researched or built or launched. Developing one would be a massive (unfunded) research project
7) There is no in-space casting facility. See above.
8) There is no in-space welding infrastructure. See above.
9) Any in-space manufacture would cost a fortune due to the extremely high labor and maintenence costs.
10) Any of the necessary components (tug, forge, casting, welding) could outright fail, making the entire system worthless.

All for what benefit -- eliminating one launch per several *thousand* pieces of debris captured? Great plan there. It's just not realistic, nor economical. Apparently non-"chowderheads" aren't aware of this.