As the United States plans to introduce a rule to reduce the number of years satellite operators have to dispose of their satellites after the end of a mission from 25 to 5 years, NASA announced that it would finance three studies aimed at understanding the growing problem of space debris and the tools to be implemented to mitigate this danger.
With the increase in the number of satellites in low orbit (LEO), space waste is becoming a real threat to spacecraft, access to space and the International Space Station, as well as to the economy that is being built in orbits companies like SpaceX, Amazon and traditional defense and aerospace players including Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Thales, Lockheed Martin and Airbus.
As NASA notes, space waste consists primarily of mission and fragmentation debris, non-functioning spacecraft, and derelict rocket stages, all of which are made by humans. NASA says it takes the threat from orbital debris seriously. “Orbital debris is one of the great challenges of our time,” said Bhavya Lal, associate administrator of the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy at NASA Headquarters.
Open landfill
The research that NASA funds aims to understand the dynamics of the orbital environment and explore policies to limit the creation of debris and mitigate the impact of existing debris. “Maintaining our ability to use space is critical to our economy, our national security, and our nation’s science and technology enterprise. These awards will fund research to help us understand the dynamics of the orbital environment and show how we can develop policies to limit the creation of debris and mitigate the impact of existing debris.
Pentagon’s Space Surveillance Network (SSN) sensors pick up 27,000 pieces of space junk, whether man-made or meteoroids, if it’s five centimeters in diameter in orbit low Earth and one meter in geosynchronous orbit. The VMS does not track the much larger number of small pieces of near-Earth orbiting junk, which are still large enough to threaten human spaceflight and robotic missions, according to NASA.
According to NASA, 23,000 pieces of debris larger than a baseball orbit Earth at speeds of up to 28,163 km/h (17,500 mph). Anti-satellite tests (ASAT) add to the problem of debris.
In 2007, China controversially used a missile to destroy an ancient weather satellite as part of an anti-satellite test, creating more than 3,500 pieces of large trackable debris and many other small untracked pieces of space debris. In November 2021, Russia conducted a “direct ascent” anti-satellite test that generated at least 1,500 traceable orbital pieces of debris, according to US Space Command.
Source: ZDNet.com