RE: Houston, we have a space junk problem!
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Thanks for this very nice blog completing well the previous one.
So, in the plot from the NASA Orbital Debris Programme Office, only objects larger than 10cm are included, aren’t they? If this is the case, I imagine we have way more objects flying around us.
On the other hand, weren’t missions to clean the space in order, at some point? How like is it that those could go live one day? They seem more and more necessary, even if expensive.
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Exactly! Those are only the tracked objects. The scary part is that there are many other objects around. The European satellite Sentinel-1A was hit in the solar panel by a piece of debris (changing the satellite position and reducing the power outcome). Photos of small impacts on the ISS and the MIR docunent that both meteoroids and atificial objects do hit our spacecraft. Probably the advance of technology and combining ground radars with other technologies (in orbit radars) could help catalogue a bigger numbers.
Regarding the active cleaning, it has proved being complicated. A Jaoanese mission carrying a tether to clean debris failed.. There is a European mission to try to catch a piece of a rocket booster that will be launched soon. Astroscale is a startup that got some attention lately because of their a mission in which they released a dummy satellite and trap it again with another catcher satellite using a magnetic system, that is a demonstrator of what could be used to trap and dormitorios satellites (bit probably only the ones ready for it. There are several technologies: harpoons, tethers, nets, magnets. None of them really tested and all of them with different specific user cases.
Then this problematic makes arise other problems on other levels. Objects are responsibility and can be claimed by the launching state, it is in a legal limbo if it is possible to take a piece of junk "property/respinsibility" of other state not collaborating. In fact, technologies related to the render vous and close operations (to retire a satellite or to service it to enlarge its life) have always been controversial because demonstrating their development involve also developing a technology that can be used to sabotage "enemy satellites".
Mmmh in fact to solve the debris issues, it seems that there is no way out but a global cooperation between the "space states" funding a cleaning mission. The magnetic catcher seems pretty promising, althigh with the speed of the debris the outcome is all but clear.
Thanks for those extra details!
Probably yes, but some theories claim that in some critical moment the companies will be economically interested (will need, basically) to clean some regions of space to be able to start using them to ensure they can operate safely.
It is a pitiful way out... but it is indeed a way out...