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Pollution in Space: Space Junk 'at Tipping Point'
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.
A computer generated graphic provided by Nasa shows objects in Earth?s orbit that are currently being tracked. (Photograph: Nasa) Nasa needs a new strategic plan for mitigating the hazards posed by spent rocket bodies, discarded satellites and thousands of other pieces of junk flying around the planet at speeds of 28,164km/h, the US National Research Council said in a study published yesterday.
The council is one of the private, non-profit US national academies that provide expert advice on scientific problems.
Orbital debris poses a threat to the approximately 1,000 operational commercial, military and civilian satellites orbiting the Earth - part of a global industry that generated $168 billion in revenues last year, Satellite Industry Association figures show.
The world's first space collision occurred in 2009 when a working Iridium communications satellite and a non-operational Russian satellite collided 789km over Siberia, generating thousands of new pieces of orbital debris.
The crash followed China's destruction in 2007 of one of its defunct weather satellites as part of a widely condemned anti-satellite missile test.
The amount of orbital debris tracked by the US Space Surveillance Network jumped from 9,949 objects in December 2006 to 16,094 in July 2011, with nearly 20 per cent of the objects stemming from the destruction of the Chinese Fengyun 1-C satellite, the research council said.
The surveillance network tracks objects of about 10cm in diameter and larger.
Some computer models show the amount of orbital debris "has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures," the council said in a statement released as part the 182-page report.
In addition to more than 30 findings, the panel made two dozen recommendations for Nasa to mitigate and improve the orbital debris environment, including collaborating with the US state department to develop the legal and regulatory framework for removing junk from space.
Current international legal principles, for example, ban nations from salvaging or otherwise collecting other nations' space objects.
The study, Limiting Future Collision Risk to Spacecraft: An Assessment of Nasa's Meteoroid and Orbital Debris Programs , was sponsored by Nasa.
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36 Comments so far
Show AllIn a closed system, the accumulation of waste products is what ultimately kills. So here we are with oil spills on land, in rivers and in oceans, atmospheric CO2, coal tailings and all the other junk from mountaintop removal, plastic islands in the oceans, agrobusiness runoff, nuclear power plant waste here on earth and whirling junk in nearby space that could threaten communications and other useful things. We cannot keep creating toxins and dirt and trying to sweep them under the rug. There is no rug big enough. Clean-up is a part of every job, as we learned in Kindergarten. We can make cleanup feasible by moving to clean energy, conservation, recycling and concentrating on what we really need to live, which does not include war.
Clean-up is indeed part of every job, as we learned in Kindergarten. Unfortunately, under capitalism, giant corporations are enthroned to act with reckless impunity, and they view nature's ecosystems as mere "externalities" to absorb their waste products. Of course, the space junk mostly originates from government-funded missions, but governments are mostly just handmaidens of big corporations anyway, another intrinsic and unavoidable part of a system which rewards unmitigated greed and creates systems where the greediest can do their dirty deeds with absolutely no accountability.
So we wait for the inevitable catastrophes and calamities the future will bring, with an insane, out-of-control system that will eventually collapse, but not before destroying a good deal of the planet, and possibly the entire biosphere. Happy Friday!
To the Moon, Mars and beyond. We will not be done until we scattered our crap all over the Universe.
And some people are scared of aliens, ha. The aliens should be scared of us and our ever expanding pile of trash.
Cute comments, made me smile. And when they realize how incredibly stupid we are, they may decide to use us as pet food for their critters. :)
If that happens we must convince the aliens that the rich are tastier and tenderer. It will be our version of the pet food commission...
OMG that was hilarious!! I am glad I wasn't eating or drinking when I read you comment.
Score 1 NC-Tom
George Carlin moments :-)
I go with the song "We'll Make Great Pets", except I assume that we've already been their pets for a while.
More 'reasons' we need the high tech space weapons - to vaporize or neutralize all of this space 'junk'.
I believe there is a real upside to this story.
When either side in a future high tech war decide to knock out the others' communication and spy satellites, the debris will increase so quickly that it will probably destroy the capability of either to control their war fighting infrastructure that is so entirely dependent on spaced based information.
If this fails, there is still the hope of dolphins developing opposable thumbs and taking over the planet with a much larger field of vision that includes the belief in coexistence.
This is my contribution to a happy Friday.
I like the cut of your jib.
Dolphins are perfectly adapted to their environment and highly intelligent. It may well be that they would eschew developing opposable thumbs after observing what the creatures with them have done to our biosphere. ;-)
Yep, the opposable thumb is definitely a mistake of nature. Evolution will take care of it eventually.
"Current international legal principles, for example, ban nations from salvaging or otherwise collecting other nations' space objects."
So there's an international legal structure that prevents the collecting of space "junk". Why not just apply the same salvage laws that apply to the world's oceans.
Off hand I'd say that that is a good start for a solution.
And I'd say that many folks in better positions than us to act are thinking along your same lines.
I'd bet its the whole "Space Command" thing that is hindering such actions. Right now the U.S. Empire and others have claims to near earth space. When that space is as internationalized as the oceans, we will see movement on this issue.
Man, we sure are a bunch of smart monkeys, aren't we?
Even better than that--Woody Allen once said we are monkeys with car keys.
It's getting so tiring with article after article that cannot name the US as at all responsible for any of the world's problems. Notice it's only Russia and China that are named in causing the space junk. Who's had more space launches and junk put into orbit than the US? The facts and figures are out there, but all of these US friendly propaganda articles fail to hold the US as a major contributor and just as irresponsible or, worse, a helpless bystander, while calling out the other space capable nations for their every infraction.
The study cited in the article was sponsored by NASA--what else would you expect? Also, can you list some of the sources for those "facts and figures" that the US has had "more space launches and junk put into orbit" than other countries? The Russian (formerly Soviet) space program has been running at least as long as the US program. I was living in Canada in 1978 when a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite crashed in northern Canada. And, yes, the following year the US Skylab crashed too; this was well-publicized at the time. There is enough blame to go around to every party. And where are "all of these US friendly propaganda articles" listed?
You can't throw stuff away in low earth orbit. There is no "away".
Just as plastic bags break down into trillions of little microscopic plastic pieces in the North Pacific Gyre, so our satellites are breaking down into trillions of little satellite dust chips in orbit. It's the second space dust storm in the history of the solar system, the first being when the solar system was formed.
Cleaning up a dust storm in the vastness of orbit isn't easy. Job one is taking all of the space junk out of orbit and into the earth's atmosphere where it will fall as atoms to earth. We currently get many tons of asteroidal iron falling naturally to earth after burning up, so if done right this process is not much of a problem to the earth.
Because most of the dust particles are all orbiting in the direction of the earth's orbit, the end job will probably be done by taking an equal mass of microparticles, the kind that won't stay in orbit for more than a couple of years, from the moon's surface and launching them into a retrograde earth orbit. Whenever they collide with regular dust chip, both will lose velocity and fall to the earth's atmosphere.
We think about military crazies in space for now, but this will not always be true. We've become a smaller planet, and we the people shall reform all earth governments to eliminate military adventurism.
Oxymoron: Modern Civilization
Benefits of space debris:
1. Probability of alien invasion much reduced due to desire to keep ships clean and shiny.
2. Global warming slowed by reduction in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth.
3. Zero gravity Hide and Seek!
Imagine this ad from somewhere in our Galaxy:
"Earth got a human being problem, BIG TIME?
No problemo!
Just call the Federation of Inter-Galactic Exterminators!
We not only remove their waste products...We remove THEM!"
Maybe the Vogons will build an intergalactic freeway right through earth's orbit.
"So long, and thanks for all the fish!"
We need the "Campaign to Save the Humans."
Now more than ever. ;)
there is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable..............................but you might be able to get a cup of coffee at the 'restaurant at the end of the universe' (before it disappears)...........
annihilation jim; total, complete, absolute annihilation..................
"I signed aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget."
To paraphrase Tennyson...(or someone very much like him). <<<<<<>>>>>>>
Man will never cease exploring only to end where he began and see the mess for the first time.
I believe it was T.S. Eliot; I never thought of him as having much in common with Tennyson.
The quote is referring to a spiritual journey. Knowing the place for the first time is not meant to become aware of how badly we have fucked up, but to recognize the home from which we came. It refers to a salvific awareness, an awakening, an enlightenment.
additional space junk:
http://news.yahoo.com/secretive-private-spaceship-builder-reports-rocket-failure-230602626.html
""The crash followed China's destruction in 2007 of one of its defunct weather satellites as part of a widely condemned anti-satellite missile test.""
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Typical american hypocrisy. The u.s. has tried many times to shoot our own satellites down and can't do it. That was what a lot of star war targets were, defunct satellites.
Really, other than the chinese and russian satellite collision nothing else has amounted to much. But if some developed country wanted to fowl up the gears of other countries' military programs in space, sending up satellites loaded with debris and blowing them up in space would create more of a chance for collisions. And like the u.s. bullshit, that country could come up with various reasons as to why the attempt to put one in orbit just didn't work or didn't know what malfunctioned. Wouldn't bother me none.
I know one thing, I wouldn't take one of those 'privatized' fun ships into space for the fun of it. Those will possibly be the most vulnerable crafts to the debris.
To paraphrase from "Cool Hand Luke":
What's your planet doing in Boss's junkyard?