The New UFO (Unidentified FALLING Object) Threat... Space Debris.

"The Sky Is Falling!... The Sky Is Falling!"

Guess What? The Children's Tale of The Histrionic and Hysterical Barnyard Bird Might Need a Re-Write...

Chicken Little Wasn't Exaggerating...

I've Blogged about the potential threat of Space Debris before, but with the recent Big News Story of the US Navy's targeted missile strike of a clunker of a US Spy Satellite that did a "George W." -it was sent to do a job... cost a lot of money... got into position... "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"... went rogue and became a deadly threat to people everywhere - I decided that it was worth re-visiting.

From the "Way to Go, China... Way to Go!" File:

In April 2006, China was scheduled to host an international conference on minimizing debris in space.

The Not-So-Funny thing is... only three months earlier, China had destroyed an old weather satellite in an anti-satellite weapon test that NASA called "the single worst contamination of low Earth orbit during the past 50 years."
(...Considering all of the space junk NASA is responsible for... Well, "people who live in glass Space Centers...")

Not surprisingly, the Chinese canceled the meeting.

The problem with what they did is this: when the Chinese satellite exploded, tens of thousands of shards shot off in every direction, creating a debris field which extends from 125 miles above the surface of Earth to 2,500 miles.

US Air Force engineers have figured that it will take 100 years for all the pieces to fall out of orbit.

O.K., we can all agree, that sounds pretty bad... But, let's be fair... I'm still waiting for the Air Force engineers to calculate the size of the debris field created by the Navy's destruction of our toxic satellite... and how long it's many thousands of pieces and chunks will take to fall out of orbit...

(Of course, I'm not holding my breath.)

Needless to say, there's a lot of debris out there... um, up there. From nuts and bolts to Rocket Boosters, that big tank of Ammonia from the ISS, an astronaut glove, "pieces of exploded spacecraft", etc.

According to NASA, "...these objects number in the millions and orbit the earth at hyper-velocities averaging 10 km/s (22,000 mi/h)."

What NASA considers 'larger particles' (objects greater than 10-cm in diameter) are being tracked and catalogued by USSPACECOM radar.

The real threat comes from so-called 'medium size particles' (objects with a diameter between 1 mm to 10 cm). These aren't easily tracked, yet they are big enough to result in catastrophic damage to spacecraft and satellites.

Now that around 20 other countries have the technology to blast satellites and whatnot into orbit and with the private sector racing to stick a flag in space... all with potentially varying degrees of success/failure at keeping their stuff up there... and considering that there are no widely-accepted international space safety protocols...

THIS is a situation that calls for a 'preemptive strike', as it were. The international community needs to get together and agree on and maintain sensible safety standards regarding whats up there and protocols to follow when an object becomes a potential threat...

What we should NOT do is wait until there is a catastrophic collision between a chunk of debris and, say, the Space Shuttle or have an important communications satellite get clobbered and rendered useless to get all nations motivated to do something.

Peace.
L.
From: www.guardian.co.uk/.

Warning of Catastrophe From Mass of 'Space Junk'

'Failure to act would be folly,' says report to UN

Robin McKie and Michael Day
The Observer,
Sunday February 24 2008


The amount of debris orbiting the Earth has reached a critical level. Old satellite parts, solar panels and the odd astronaut's lost glove now pose serious risks to space missions. A report from the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety is calling for stringent international laws to be brought in urgently to avert a tragedy.

The threat posed by orbiting debris can only be allayed by extending civil aviation standards into space, says the report, which is to be presented to the United Nations in April. 'Failure to act now to regulate space to protect property and human life would be pure folly,' says the association's director, Tommaso Sgobba. Professor Richard Crowther, who is representing the UK at a UN space safety meeting in Vienna, agrees: 'Eventually binding international civil aviation style laws will have to come.'

Last week, the United States courted an international row after shooting down a disabled spy satellite, saying its fuel could cause serious damage if it crashed to Earth. Russia, however, claimed that the operation was a US cover-up to test its anti-satellite weapons.

According to the space agency NASA, there are now 9,000 pieces of orbiting junk, weighing a total of more than 5,500 tonnes: old rocket launchers, tools and instruments dropped by astronauts, and pieces of exploded spacecraft. Examples include a glove lost by astronaut Ed White during a 1965 space walk, a camera that Michael Collins let slip in space in 1966 and a pair of pliers that an International Space Station astronaut recently let slip through their fingers.

Space junk varies in size from tiny bolts and screws to huge lumps of fuselage and are to be found in two main regions: low Earth orbit, a few hundred miles above Earth, and geostationary orbit, 22,300 miles up, where communication satellites are programmed to hover above the planet.

In low Earth orbit, pieces of debris pose particular problems. They could strike manned spacecraft and lead to fatal de-pressurization, space experts warn. In 1991, a space shuttle had to carry out an emergency seven-second burn of its engines to avoid being struck by part of a Russian Cosmos satellite.

Low-orbiting debris also poses a risk to Earth itself. In 2006, pieces of a Russian spy satellite burnt up in the atmosphere, passing perilously close to a Latin American Airbus carrying 270 passengers over the Pacific.

To date, only one person has been injured by space debris, however: an Oklahoma woman who was hit in the shoulder by a piece of a Delta rocket's fuel tank, but was uninjured by this extraterrestrial attack.

The problem, according to the Association for the Advancement of Space Safety report, is that up to 20 countries are now able to launch objects into space - but very few of these have rigid safety protocols. Nor is the problem of space debris confined to near Earth, it adds. Satellites in geostationary orbit are supposed to be moved farther into space after they become defunct - but often that obligation is not met.

More than 200 dead satellites now litter this vital part of space. Within 10 years that number could increase fivefold, warns the report. The resulting chaos could lead to serious damage or loss of a spacecraft.

'Unfortunately we may have to wait for something to happen, perhaps a big near miss, before people realise we can't go on as we are,' Crowther said.