Slashdot Mirror
Report Warns of Space Junk Reaching a Tipping Point
intellitech sends this excerpt from a Reuters report:
"The amount of debris orbiting the Earth has reached a tipping point for collisions, which would in turn generate more of the debris that threatens astronauts and satellites, according to a U.S. study released on Thursday (PDF). ... The amount of orbital debris tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network jumped from 9,949 cataloged objects in December 2006 to 16,094 in July 2011, with nearly 20 percent of the objects stemming from the destruction of the Chinese FENGYUN 1-C satellite, the National Research Council said. ... the panel made two dozen recommendations for NASA to mitigate and improve the orbital debris environment, including collaborating with the State Department to develop the legal and regulatory framework for removing junk from space. The study, 'Limiting Future Collision Risk to Spacecraft: An Assessment of NASA's Meteoroid and Orbital Debris Programs,' was sponsored by NASA."
When it's time to play Planetes for real.
That'll work, right? Or maybe set up a death star and fire a turbo laser.
A small fleet of net-flinging spacecraft could clear every big piece of space junk out of low-Earth orbit within a dozen years, according to a researcher working on the concept. Each spacecraft, known as an ElectroDynamic Debris Eliminator (EDDE), would capture orbital debris in a net, then drag the junk down out of harm's way. The EDDEs would draw their power from the sun and from Earth's magnetic field rather than rely on costly chemical propellants, helping keep costs down, said Jerome Pearson, president of Star Technology and Research, Inc.
until somebody die from it. sorry, but it's been that way for centuries.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
That we literally shit up every single place we go. Do we have a genetic predisposition to fuck things up, or is it just 200,000 years of learned behavior?
Leave it to China. What's next, more lead-flavored freeze dlied ice cleam for the ISS crew?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
There's a very real danger at this point that we will soon run into a real Kessler syndrome situation in low-Earth orbit. This would be really bad since this is both a really useful area to have satellites and the area where it is cheapest to put them in orbit. We have taken a few steps to help matters. For example, it became apparent that the Delta rockets were causing a lot of space debris and the more recent versions have been redesigned to minimize those issues. Unfortunately, many rockets from other countries and some other US rockets still have serious problems. There's no indication that China is taking any serious steps to minimize space debris. There have been some attempts to require people who put up satellites to have plans for either deorbiting them or parking them in graveyard orbits. That's now being done for most civilian satellites, but we don't know what if anything is being done for military satellites. This is in some sense one massive tragedy-of-the-commons type situation.
The current engineering solutions for removing space debris are also lacking. There's a proposal to use lasers to ablate small bits of debris but this is politically not great since lasers powerful enough to do that could be used as weapons. Most of the other proposals have other problems or have the same problem: essentially any method of easily deorbiting objects is going to be a threat to satellites, and so for obvious reasons governments don't want other governments to have that sort of capability.
One point which this new study makes that I had not seen before is the point that the calculated cost of satellite collisions is underestimated because not only do satellites collisions destroy satellites but they also create more debris which can then endanger other satellites and requires further tracking.
Time to fire up the Space-Industrial-Complex! NASA, let's get our astronauts up there and clean that mess up! They can stick the debris in the ISS so that when it deorbits, it will carry down tons of space junk!
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
With enough space debris, we can deflect the sun's rays, which will end global warming.
so that means another 20% of all space junk is from when we shot one of our satellites down
and in the 80s, we shot down another satellite, so that must mean another 20%!
and again russia shot down a satellite
so that must mean 80% of all space junk is from rockets that blow up old satellites in order to maintain standing in some international geosynchronous pissing contest
if we keep looking through history chances are other countries have shot down satellites as well, perhaps more than once. why, If the report had been released 25 years ago you might even see the word china replaced with the word Russia.
NASA: great place for science to be done, but has an ugly habit of political rhetoric being injected into its reports.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"Gotta tune in pico waves, gotta tune out PCBs,
gotta tune in market crash, gotta tune out polar shift,
gotta tune in narrow minds, gotta tune out space junk,
gotta tune in bombs, atomic lasers falling from the sky...
where's my umbrella?"
-- The B-52's, 'Channel Z' (Cosmic Thing)
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The way I see it, one problem is the solution to the other problem. Allow climate change to occur without interference. The heated atmosphere expands in volume, reaching higher in altitude providing increased drag resistance to all that space junk. As more and more space debris burn up in the atmosphere, they remain aloft, blocking out sunlight and begin a "nuclear winter"-like scenario that brings temperature back to normal. Problems solved! In all seriousness, economic investments are at stake here for developed/developing nations that depend on space-based tools. communication satellites, weather monitoring, GPS/navigation, etc. I think it is feasible for not just NASA to accept responsibility, but bring forth an international agreement to solve the problem jointly in the interest of all who have a current (and perhaps future) stake in the matter.
========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
The plan on how to fix this is already in place http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planeteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
I work for a space agency - and I can tell you that this is concerning pretty much everyone. The real problem is the most sought after orbits - the sun synchronous polar orbits that weather and environmental satellites like to use. These orbits are already congested enough (not space wise, but radio spectrum wise) and almost all national and transnational agencies are setting up monitoring projects to predict potential collisions which will totally ruin these orbits for generations.
It's a real and serious problem. If you get a collision cascade you can't launch ANYTHING safely. You're stuck. Imprisoned in your own gravity well.
WM has taken a real green bend lately -- generating power from landfill gas, etc. If you could show them how to generate electricity (and money) from space junk removal, they might bite.
they were like 'awww awesome, we blew that shit up. did you see that? fuck, man, just like Return of the Jedi'
Zero to space junk denialism in less than half an hour :-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
We can starting cleaning up the orbit, and bill them by deducting the cost plus a... modest profit off the US debt they're holding...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Maybe the folks at Kevlar can make some sort of "bullet-proof vest" for satellites that is lightweight and able to protect satellites from micro-meteors. Hell, if it's black, maybe it could provide solar power for the satellite!
SPACE JUNK
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Pointing out specific countries that cause pollution is obvious prejudice, possibly racist.
We need to be more understanding, and just use the phrase "a country, which shall not be named, recently dumped a shitload of pollution into the environment. we cant tell you which country - that would be prejudiced"
All one needs is a panel to deflect objects downward and a robot that can get around it's orbit to get the job done. Put multiple drones up in multiple orbits. And yes I understand about the big difference in speed of objects but the solution is to angle the panel to deflect less, maybe enough for the next bumper drone to deflect it again. All we need to do is make the junk deorbit sooner and it will burn up. Plus the bumper drone actually gets a nudge up and a nudge faster with each collision. So in the least if the craft is rugged and light enough it could get at least get some energy to put it in position for it's next collision.
For some rare objects (such as complete satellites) a different system of using a net would probably be needed.
I think this is a given since the alternative is more or less similar such that each satellite has a protection shield satellites in front of it and behind it. That would obviously be much more expensive.
When nothing interesting has happened for the last 50 years in {TOPIC} and you want to get more funding for {PROJECT}, the best way to do it is to trot out the term "Tipping Point."
Note to self: Use the term Tipping Point more often.
It's the only way to be sure
Dear Team and readers, as a participant of Singularity University '11 at NASA Ames, I would be very happy to share with you my video about space debris :
http://twitc.com/Prx1eWiui
I hope you will like it and feel free to publish it and share it.
Jaz.
Create a compound mixed with air under extreme pressure that when launched into orbit and released becomes a hundred foot wide(or more), NERF-like object that can absorb massive kinetic impacts of micro-sized objects. (Carbon nanotubes?) Even better, keep it attached to the rocket so you have a mobile orbit cleaner or have the missile detach a half-dozen smaller 'cleaners' once in position. After a few calculated orbits the controllers can use the rockets to speed up the sponges into a slightly higher position and repeat. Or perhaps create world's largest geosynchronous NERF ball (300 ft?) and have it absorb every object in that orbital space. Seriously, is this workable?
As an alternative to pushing junk back down the gravity well, why not keep it in orbit, but corral all that material into clumps that could save us all millions in future? That junk is raw material. Keep it floating around, but parked in safer orbits where the junk can be exploited for possible lesser cost than rocketing more junk into orbit later. :)
Orbiting junk yard, pick your part, whatever.
Send up a rocket full of nuts and bolts and blow it up --- only send it in a retrograde orbit. New space junk hits old space junk, orbital velocities cancel, everything falls and burns up.
Oh, you wanted to keep some of the stuff up there? Sheesh, do I have to think of a solution to everything?
to absorb all of the space junk into one big blob.
With the forthcoming economic catastrophe the world will shortly face, almost nobody will be able to afford to launch any more satellites.
We had a story about ejected earth matter making it to Jupiter's moons, yet this stuff in the sky won't fall? It just doesn't make sense.
Just as a quick exercise without foreknowledge, one can imagine possible approaches
- mop up the debris
- explode the debris
- slow down the debris so it falls out of orbit
- selective approaches, safe corridors.
The approach could depend on size and material.
You shouldn't explode big pieces, it just makes the problem worse. It's like exploding approaching asteroids with bombs, it creates more projectiles. It could only work if you can explode things far enough so they become extremely small. Maybe exploding pieces makes sense for pieces that are just above some danger threshold.
One could imagine a long term 'cloudlike' situation with a lot of dust and increased drag. The cloud would also help in getting the material out of orbit.
There should be some nice models for that.
Mopping up is a challenge because it you have to avoid creating more debris while you're at it. You'll need spiderweb materials that can absorb a lot of energy.
The delicate approach would be to slow down the debris. If it slows down enough, it will fall to earth.How could you do that though, Lasers? Then the difficulty is to generate enough impulse without overheating the debris. Electromagnetically(eddy currents), with some dedicated satellites? The debris will contain a lot of metal.
It seems with each strategy you'll need to model the statistical evolution of the debris.
There, and now I can check the article to check my guesses...
With China having about 20% of the world population,
it's only fair that they would have about 20% of the space-debris too.
Anybody ever wonder if all that junk orbiting the planet might be part of the cause behind some of our "worst weather for x hundred years" that we've had lots of recently?! Reflecting or absorbing heat from the sun. Leeching vital atmospheric particles. Or even changing precipitation levels on re-entry? Don't know much about the science of weather but just a thought...
Space debris could take out the TV relaying satellites which would be my problem, whereas global warming is my future grandchildren's generation's problem.
Why should I care about someone else's problem?
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
This issue has been talked about for decades, sort of like the space watch for NEOs. But no one seems to have taken it seriously -- as one poster said, just wait until an entertainment satellite gets taken out. Looking around at out planet the issue and its non-response seem typical -- we blunder into someplace, rip out what we want and leave whatever wreckage behind for someone else to deal with. Guess the Chinese will have to deal with it since they seem to be the only country that is actively moving forwards. The rest of us are slowly abandoning space as our societies crumble and we creep into our holes to die. I suspect the timing of this is to try and drum up some funding for what is left of the space program. Pity the anti-science crowd in Washington are too busy trimming the wicks of their whale-oil lamps to care.
There was a presentation a few weeks ago by G. Ganguli from Naval Research Laboratory where he suggested placing a layer of very fine dust in an LEO band. The dust should be too fine to cause any impact damage but thick enough that it increases drag, decaying the orbit of debris. A satellite would be unharmed, although its orbit would also decay slightly. You can even tune the dust's own decay rate to match that of the debris size you're targeting.
Couldn't find that original paper online, but here's another: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.1401
Paint the particles white the topside, and black underneath. Help by zapping them from above with SDI beams (laser, particle - charged or not, etc). Finally use it constructively. Careful not to burn what's below (which was their original intent). That robocop news clip, regarding SDI accidents might become too convenient, er, I mean, foresighted.
You could also place glue soup in their path. Electric, magnetic, photon-sensitive ... whatever. You could ask the Anunaki for mo' 'n betta' type ideas, as well. ;p
Since the US no longer has the capability to send people to the ISS, Russia can't get their rockets to fly, thereby leaving the ISS to be abandoned. The problem is self-resolving.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
As a few others have suggested, mopping up some of the smaller bits with a few large, gooey balls of some sort of aerogel might work. Statistically, the tipping point suggests that the likelihood of impact between a small fragment and a satellite (resulting in more bits of shrapnel adding to the debris cloud) is not very low. If there are on the order of a few thousand larger pieces up there serving as targets for the smaller bits and we can calculate the probability of impact between these, then we should be able to figure out how many (and how big) these blobs need to be. Momentum transfer between the crud picked up over time and the blob will serve to shift it around and sweep larger areas than a simple orbit would.
It might be possible to launch multiple independently orbited areogel dispensing canisters on its way up through several altitudes. Leave them up for a while (years) and let them collect junk. Then intercept them with small propulsion units that will slow them into atmospheric re-entry.
One could also launch such mops from the ISS or other high value orbiting platforms in their orbits to block head-on collisions with small bits
Have gnu, will travel.
We should create a new space vehicle that could go into orbit, pick up the space junk with a robotic arm, store it and shuttle it back to earth. We could call it the "Space Shuttle"
If everything sent up was wrapped in a fabric skin that would keep it together, keep it from fragmenting even if it was in a collision, that might reduce the exponential curve of junk.
I think it's kind of funny that most of these space objects are actually covered in a thin film of astronaut crap, and it's even suggested that life on earth may have come from a space shit hitting the earth some millenia ago