Spaceship Graveyards and Massive Debris
“With more commercial satellite launches and space tourism, we need a more efficient way of maintaining safety,” says Daniel Murray, an air traffic specialist at the FAA in Washington DC.
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Before embarking on the subject of trash in space, let’s look at the overload of trash on Earth that we cannot solve the problem of eliminating in a safe and efficient manner. We were given a life to live full of choices, and emptying our accumulating trash is one of those choices. Within our home, mind you. But once it leaves there, it seems to be up for grabs—newspapers which should dissolve in the overloaded landfills have been seen to be over forty-years of age and not in a deteriorative state.
Two major events has brought the subject of space trash to the forefront—the People’s Liberation Army’s destruction of an ailing Chinese weather satellite with a ballistic missile in 2007, and the destruction of a faulty U.S. spy satellite from a US warship in 2008. The purpose of the latter was to prevent the satellite’s fuel tank from crashing to Earth with its reserve of the toxic fuel hydrazine.
The issue of these two incidents, among others, is within the statement by RET News is that “an average of one of the 17,000 space debris currently in orbit makes re-entry each day, with quite a bit of toxic material involved. The problem in addition to accumulating space debris is that countries are accusing each other of militarization in space.
We all know that Styrofoam products will never dissolved in our lifetime, with holes developing in the earth’s ozone layer from their development. And now, space is rapidly being filled with our many space ventures.
Space debris is filling the mid and low orbits of Earth, which is a hazard to upcoming missions—such as the Hubble repair mission. Usually old satellites are brought to the Pacific Ocean area or parked deep in space referred to as a “graveyard orbit.” What is becoming a worry is the upcoming space tourism, along with more and more satellites being launched . The debris from old satellites that is present above Earth will collide with incoming spacecraft and cause expensive damage and to human lives.
When our spacecraft launch to space, ground controllers track the debris down to send signals to the craft. The internet space sites are aware that the International Space Station was recently shifted in order to avoid colliding with space debris. But as more and more debris accumulate, the huge volume will make this task impossible and unable to avoid accidents. “We do not have clear rules of the road,” admits Vladimir Agapov of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. “Close and sometimes dangerous operations are now common in some orbits.”
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 14th, 2008 at 7:39 am and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
