The International Space Station has once again had to maneuver to escape orbiting space junk. These maneuvers, which should happen more and more frequently, once again reveal the increased risk of space debris in Low Earth Orbit.
Roscosmos reports that the International Space Station (ISS) descended a little more than 300 meters for almost three minutes to avoid a piece of space debris left over from the 1994 US space launch before returning to its typical orbit.
The news came from Dimitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, and appears as the last link in a series of events involving the rapidly growing cloud of space debris surrounding the planet.
Recently, NASA had to postpone a spacewalk to fix an antenna to the ISS due to space debris concerns, and the ISS had to maneuver to get out of the way of a non-operating Chinese satellite last month.
Also, Russia conducted an anti-satellite missile test last month, destroying a decommissioned Russian satellite, and astronauts on the ISS had to lock themselves in docked Soyuz and SpaceX Dragon Crew capsules for safety as they crossed the ISS debris field.
Russia is not the only country that has recently tested an anti-satellite missile. In early 2019, India launched an anti-satellite missile test against debris fields currently orbiting the planet.
The USA is one of the countries mentioned in this regard. It downed a failed satellite for safety reasons in 2008, while China shot down one of its own satellites in 2007.
And, as in the recent incident, launch vehicles often leave behind booster rocket fragments, coatings, and other debris that typically falls to Earth and burns in the atmosphere. However, these debris do not always enter the atmosphere and burn. The debris can remain in orbit and then pose a serious threat for decades.
To understand why space junk is such a concern, all you need to know is how fast orbiting objects move. According to NASA, objects in orbit are moving at speeds of up to about 28,160 km/s, and since almost all of the space junk there is made of metal, any collision poses a great danger.
NASAThe relative velocities of collisions can be greatly reduced when objects move at the same speeds, but the collision of the ISS and an old satellite fragment the size of an air conditioner at around 120 km/h is still more than enough to cause serious damage. It may even threaten the integrity of the ISS.
Even smaller pieces of debris can be a serious hazard. There are around 23,000 pieces of debris the size of a baseball or larger in orbit, and hitting such a piece of metal debris, which is moving at just 320 km/h, could easily puncture a hole in a spacecraft or satellite.
What’s worse is that this event has happened to many satellites. Even more space debris is spawning as a result, causing a cascading proliferation of space debris that many fear will lead to something known as Kessler syndrome.
In this disaster scenario called Kessler syndrome; The space junk is getting so out of control that it’s picking up a momentum of its own, destroying an ever-increasing number of satellites, creating a merely swirling cloud of high-velocity debris, magnifying it to the point where Low Earth Orbit has become too dangerous to work with.
There are mentions of half a million pieces of debris the size of a marble or larger, and about 100 million pieces of debris 1 mm or larger. According to NASA, several space shuttle windows had to be replaced due to damage caused by pieces of debris, which were later determined to be pieces of paint.
“In fact, millimeter-sized orbital debris represents the highest end-of-mission risk for most robotic spacecraft operating in low Earth orbit,” NASA says. If Low Earth Orbit turns into a swirling whirlwind of metal shrapnel traveling at 17,500 mph (about 28,160 km/h), attempting to pass through it becomes impossible.
You have to accelerate as you ascend into Low Earth Orbit, so any type of spacecraft or satellite you attempt to orbit in a post-Kessler syndrome environment will basically have to do this launch effort in a hail of bullets made of debris traveling at speeds of hundreds or even thousands of kilometers per hour.
If the vehicle you’re trying to launch into space is destroyed and shattered by space debris in the process, you’ll have more space debris to deal with the next time you try to send something else into orbit.
If this catastrophic scenario materializes, launching a new satellite or vehicle into space would be a seemingly impossible endeavor, akin to staying dry by escaping all raindrops in a rainstorm. We will have to wait for this cloud of debris to eventually fall into Earth’s atmosphere and burn, a process that could take tens or perhaps hundreds of years.
Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen wrote in the Financial Times last Thursday that regulation is needed to keep space safe for humanity in the future: “If we don’t change direction, access to space opportunities to improve our lives on Earth may be shut down for generations.”
33331
