Gizmodo
The European Space Agency has just released images showing all the satellites and human-made debris now orbiting space as a result of 51 years of launching stuff since Sputnik. That's about 6,000 satellites up there—of which only 800 remain operational—plus thousands of other objects from launches and accidents. According to their mindblowing simulations things are getting a lot worse:
About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).
Yes, we knew that there was a lot of crap out there, but not to this extent. According to the ESA, this is really bad news and urgent measures are needed. Explosions in space are not disastrous on their own, but because of the aftermath. One example: a geostationary satellite travels at 6,213 miles per hour. If it explodes, all the debris stays near the orbit, forming a cloud around the Earth within a few days, as this simulation shows:
The ESA is urging to introduce measures to mitigate this problem, like the complete depletion of fuel in rocket stages (like some Delta launchers already do following NASA's Procedural Requirements for Limiting Orbital Debris) or returning objects to Earth once their mission is complete (perhaps to destroy them on re-entry,) just like SES Americom is going to do with their brand-new AMC-14. This satellite failed to reach its projected altitude and now has to be splashed into the sea because of a dispute with Boeing, which won't let SES Americom use their patented recovery method to put the satellite into the right geostationary orbit.
The impact of these measures could be huge, as reflected by this simulation of how things could look by the year 2112, with and without taking action:
While the idea of bringing back used stages and satellites back to Earth may seem too expensive, in the long run it's clear that leaving all this trash up there is going to have huge consequences to the development of space exploration and colonization. Those concepts may still seem science fiction for many, but as these simulations show, the current and future problem is very real, and could be extremely dangerous.
This is how it looks when orbital debris hits a spaceship, simulated in a laboratory.
[ESA Gallery, Space debris: assessing the risk, NASA, Wikipedia — via Space Travel and Slashdot]
Comments
It's starting to look like the junk surrounding earth in the Wall-E trailer.
We litter on Earth, we litter in space. I'm not surprised, frankly. This whole space thing had to bite us in the ass eventually. "What goes up, must come down." It's the WHERE that's fun...
I've always thought surely sending loads of hunks of metal (among other materials) into space would eventually upset the balance on earth?
Couldn't we get some earth-sized force-flex glad bag out there, and just let the trash float into it? I'm no Nasa engineer, but i think this is doable.
Space...it's the new China for tech junk!
What about my nutbastard's ego? I don't see the arrow pointing to that. Not that you need an arrow to see it.
ZING!
Its amazing that we've already polluted space. Whats next, spacial warming?
I think the department of space sanitation needs to send up some space sweepers and clean up the debris. Maybe bring some good behavior prisoners in orange space suits, or a scout troop to assist in the clean up.
@Darrone:
satellites are pretty sharp, I'd be scared that they would poke a hole somewhere in it.
@discounteggroll: Cmone, force flex? those bags are super strong, and it says right on the box that sharp objects won't poke through. And it's not like a company would lie to me.
One of my favorite authors, Stanislaw Lem, wrote that the evolutionary advancement of the dominant species on any given life bearing planet was directly proportional to the amount of garbage in orbit. Of particular interest are planets whose flotsam has coalesced into rings.
We're on our way.
Isn't there an anime about this...I think it's called Planetes.
Space garbage men...hauling in old satellites
Any ancient Chinese astronomers up there? No? Damn, I guess the Mythbusters were right.
stinky garbage ball into space is next
++Hunt on the word of the day: flotsam
I've been thinking for several years that we should launch some satellites designed to de-orbit space junk.
You hear me NASA? ESA? Russia? China? Anybody..?
We can get rid of this PRONTO by telling the guys who dig through my recycle bins for cans that there are MILLIONS of aluminum cans up there. They will find a way to collect them in their shopping carts, I guarandamntee it.
The main article image is not to scale. The satellite symbols are orders of magnitude larger than scale. This gives a misleading perception of the actual conditions in orbit. I'm not saying there isn't a problem, but the graphic is unnecessarily alarmist.
My god ... it's full of trash.
@Curves:
Hahahaha. Hilarious!
Send giant magnets up attached to a ship by a long tether. Trawl around the debris field collecting pieces and then sent the ball of junk off towards the sun (Pat. Pend.)!
HOLY SPACE CRAP BATMAN!!!
@Curves: Along the same lines, if we could convince someone from my kids' school that there's a fund-raising opportunity in there, they'd be all over that.
The U.S. Military is concerned about space junk because the U.S. Military is concerned about the environment...stupid turtles. The U.S. Military has a plan to help. The U.S. Military wants to place a powerful free electron laser in high orbit to gently nudge space junk into degenerating orbits...or blast it into a pieces too small to worry about. The U.S. Military's definition of "space junk" is top secret so don't bother asking.
So, looking at that simulation, I believe we should leave the space junk. All the junk would help block out some of the sun's rays, thereby equalizing global warming. So we can keep spewing CO2 into the atmosphere and we don't have to worry with a stupid space cleanup program. Win-win. :P
Ok, the graphics are COMPLETELY MISLEADING.
Do you have any idea the VOLUME of space these things occupy? It's much more than the volume of the earth itself. 6,000 objects, from screwdrivers to car sized, and theres in excess of the entire volume of the earth in which they live.
If the graphics were to scale, it would be significant. But those dots are being shown at thousands of times their actual size relative to the earth.
Space... the final junkyard
I said when they were blowing up that spy satellite that there was a crap load of debris orbiting the Earth. There should be a development of a clean up program for our orbit, but it won't happen till someone dies from space junk or something more tragic.
@nutbastard: Yes, the objects are not up to scale, but look at the number of total objects, the number of explosions and collisions, with the resulting micro-debris.
Then, look at the image of the microimpact and the projections.
This problem is very real, and both NASA and ESA take it very seriously.
This is such BS, imagine if you were driving along on a planet 50% larger than the earth, the whole planet was a drivable surface and there were only 8,000 other cars on the planet, what's the chance of having an accident? You'd have to be a pretty bad navigator of your car.
OMG, its fulla trash.
/cut to Strauss
@dead_red_eyes: damn you stole my joke, by which I mean, I got here too late.
@HeD:
that's right also the earth is approx 6,400km, the surface area of a sphere is 4(pi)r^2, so thats 3,292,528,640,000 square km obviously including land and water coverage.
Do you think that 6000 pieces of garbage would make a differance on earth?
So something in orbit might be
150,000km up from the centre of the earth so the surface that it would occupy if all the trash was in the same plane would be 282,600,000,000 square km
You could drive an American car with that kinda acerage
Simple solution. Reverse the rotation of the earth for a few hours. Done.
At least we haven't deposited trash all over the Earth in the process. Thank GOD it's only in space, or we would be SCREWED!!
You know i would have used an image from Futurama where they send a rocket full of trash into space :)
What we need is *more* space junk. Covered in mirrors. Take that, global warming!
@Darrone: LOL good stuff
The Deathstar is being assembled piece by piece to encase the planet.
By the looks of it, Earth will have rings soon.
Keep in mind, the satellites in the image are NOT TO SCALE. It only looks crowded because the representations of them are so big. They're about the size of a country.
@aussie:
well, it's a bit more complicated than that, the relative velocities of small particles vs a space shuttle are enough to do real damage. if those cars were traveling at thousands of miles an hour, it would be tough to avoid collisions on an eventual scale.
@Jesus Diaz:
Yeah but NASA's on my shitlist, a bunch of morons perpetuating an old paradigm of ancient, dangerous technology. A bunch of sensationalist, self-important blowhards IMO. So... that's where that comes from.
IS space junk a problem? sure. But there's plenty of "natural" space junk and im getting tired of every government, organization and company insisting we're fucking up this planet in every conceivable way, it's all us, the planet was perfect before WE came around.
It has the distinct flavor of propaganda, but for what purpose i do not know.
Um... Sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads?
Problem solved. See you on Monday.
Even Geosynchronous orbit is starting to look "chunky", although I expected LEO to be full of crap.
I like the idea of zapping the random paint chips, bolts, gloves, etc with a gigawatt laser to cook them off, or de-orbit them, but this might be a job that goes on indefinitely. And who pays for this? The US?, the UN? Torchwood?
why is everybody so spaced out?
@.tox: Yes, we know the sats and debris are not to scale, but the density is high now and it will be extremely high in the future. NASA or ESA are not saying there's going to be a collision between a satellite and the shuttle (although it's not entirely out of the question), but the debris is a real danger that affect current space missions and will affect future ones even more.
@nutbastard: See above. This is not about fucking up the planet, it's about putting infrastructures and lives at risk. Micro-debris is no joke for the ISS, Soyuz or the shuttle.
@tamoko:
the best thing to do would be to throw a huge solar powered electromagnet out there that would gather all the crap into one glob, then just let it fall back to earth.
@nutbastard: Propaganda to facilitate the development of "legal" ground or orbitally based laser weapons, perhaps? Or to at least set the ground work for legitimizing orbital weapons and serves as a work around for the space based weapons treaties?
@Jesus Diaz:
"Micro-debris is no joke for the ISS, Soyuz or the shuttle."
I agree, but the ISS, Soyuz and the Shuttle ARE a joke.
Does this eventually affect the amount of sun light we get?
...Or make colorful collages from old soviet boosters, bags of frozen astronaut feces, and glittery solar panels.
I'm with you Nutbastard - NASA needs to change it's methodology and ideals fast, or they'll remain irrelevant as (hopefully) privately developed and funded space flight, figuratively, takes off.
Whoever they get to take away all that garbage, I'm sure they'll wake me up too early with the noise.
@tamoko:
I'd agree, if i weren't virtually positive that we already have orbital weapons platforms.
I think, like this whole global warming bullshit (bullshit in that it's not our fault - the entire solar system is heating up) it's a push for world government, getting the people used to the idea of a Unified Earth, in the name of quelling terrorism (satisfies the rednecks) environmental problems (satisfies the hippies) and a few other, more sinister goals.
@the_goz: That was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the pictures. I can't believe the first comment hit the nail on the head.
@nutbastard: I've hung out with a lot of NASA engineers, and they're hardly what you'd expect. Unfortunately, the upper management (as is usually the case) suffers from head-ass syndrome.
This will take junk-yard wars to a whole new level.
@apeguero: Doubt it. But scientists have had tech idea of placing a semi-transparent Sun Shield at a the L1 Langran point; that would block some of the sunlight, and hopefully help to cool the Earth by cutting down on a minuscule amount of solar heating. Cool idea, but it will probably never happen...
@ideaman2020: Maybe they'll create a mission similar to what they've done on Everest to encourage people to bring down empty oxygen bottles. Space Sherpas anyone?
@mindshadow:
ATTENTION GIZ READERS:
I NOMINATE MINDSHADOW FOR THE I-CAN-FIX-TWO-OF-MANKINS-LARGEST-PROBLEMS-WITH-ONE-SOLUTION-THAT REQUIRES-US-TO-DO-NOTHING AWARD.
@nutbastard: I agree, I think there have probably been "dark satellites", in high orbit for decades, perhaps even nuclear armed. I've read a lot about the US and Soviet orbital bombardment systems they developed, and possibly deployed, in th early 70's, it's seriously scary shit.
Love those magnet ideas.... For all those wrought iron satelites we launched over the years! LOL
one dyson sphere, coming right up
@Jesus Diaz:
this is ridciulous. drinking water contains more crap as a % of water than space contains space debris as a % of "space"
lets worry about something that a) we can fix and b) has an impact on the lives of actual people on earth
@Jesus Diaz:
@Curves
@nutbast