No One's in Charge

16 February 2009



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Satellite Collision Creates Space Catastrophe

Last week, a derelict Russian satellite collided about 800 kilometers above the Earth with a working communications satellite owned by Iridium, a company that does telephony by satellite. The result of the incident is a huge cloud of debris in Earth orbit that threatens other satellites. Worst of all, Russian Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov said, “800 kilometers is a very popular orbit which is used by Earth-tracking and communications satellites. The clouds of debris pose a serious danger to them” In other words, it happened in the most dangerous place possible, and it happened because no one is in charge.

A satellite collision isn't like a car accident. The Iridium craft weighed 560 kilograms and the Russian craft nearly a bit more; both weigh less than a subcompact. However because of the speed at which orbiting satellites are traveling (thousands of miles an hour), much more kinetic energy is involved. James Oberg, a NASA veteran who is now space consultant, said in an e-mail to the media, “At physical contact at orbital speeds, a hypersonic shock wave bursts outwards through the structures. It literally shreds the material into confetti and detonates any fuels.”

This means that there are thousands of bits in orbit, most of which are in the impact area, but many of which have moved into other orbits. These are traveling at the speeds still thousands of kilometers an hour (as they must to stay in orbit) as the satellites were. David Wright at the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security said this is like “a shotgun blast that threatens other satellites in the region.

After more than 50 years of launching stuff into orbit, the pristine nature of space near the Earth is gone. The US military tracks active 900 satellites, and 17,000 bits of debris larger than 2 inches. As more junk goes up, collisions are likely to increase. This is especially so because the US, Russians, Europeans, and Chinese (the main spacefaring nations) don't share all of their information. After all, some of those satellites are used for spying.

Dr. Oberg wrote, “The collision offers a literally heaven-sent opportunity for the Obama administration to take forceful, visible and long-overdo measures to address a long-ignored issue of 'space debris'.” There is, sadly, not much the human race can do to clean up the mess that is already up there. However, preventing further clutter is possible. An international treaty for the removal of derelict satellites comes to mind (at last a mission for the shuttle). Regulations that spread the traffic out vertically may also help. Someone, though, needs to take the lead before the prime real estate up there is too garbage ridden to be of use.

© Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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