• Space debris has contaminated so much of Earth’s orbit that it is endangering satellites and astronauts.

• The company Kayhan Space issues around 1,000 space collision warnings every day.

• Earth orbit experts fear debris will trigger an “unstoppable chain reaction” that disrupts the launch.

So much junk fills Earth’s orbit that collision avoidance has become a busy business.

“We’re talking about the dead satellites, the rocket bodies, the fairings, the wrenches, the gloves, things like that that were left in orbit,” physicist Thomas Berger said in a press conference at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington DC on March 11 . December.

In addition to these recognizable objects, there are millions of pieces of debris in orbit that are moving faster than a bullet.

All of these things accumulate and increase the risk of explosive space collisions, which are dangerous for astronauts and satellites.

The Earth’s orbit is now so full of garbage that around 1,000 warnings about possible impending collisions are sent to satellite operators every day, said Berger.

For example, Araz Feyzi, co-founder of orbital data company Kayhan Space, told BI in an email that some of his customer satellites receive up to 800 alerts per day from the US Space Force.

Siamak Hesar, the company’s other co-founder, later wrote in a SpaceNews editorial that the company tracks “more than 60,000 alerts per week for a constellation of about 100 satellites.”

Most of these warnings come from near Earth’s orbit, about 550 kilometers (340 miles) high, where SpaceX’s Starlink satellites live.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult for satellite operators to determine which of these warnings are important and which ones to pay attention to,” said Berger, executive director of the Space Weather Technology, Research and Education Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Because trackers cannot perfectly predict the positions of objects in space, these collision warnings are triggered when objects are expected to pass each other within a short distance. Only a small proportion of warnings actually end in a collision.

When space objects collide, they hurl debris in multiple directions at high speeds, creating a new zone of hazardous debris in orbit.

“It could set off a chain reaction, an unstoppable chain reaction of further collisions, ultimately leading to a completely filled space environment,” Berger said.

In a worst-case scenario, the orbit could become so crowded that there is no safe space left to launch new rockets.

This is a situation that experts call Kessler syndrome and “which we want to prevent,” Berger said.

Bottlenecks and near misses

Although rare, major collisions and explosions have occurred on a number of occasions.

In 2009, an American and a Russian satellite crashed together, At the end there are nearly 2,000 pieces of debris large enough to be discovered – at least 10cm wide – and thousands of other smaller pieces.

In 2021, a Chinese satellite and a Russian piece of rocket collided, It creates at least 37 pieces of debris large enough for ground systems to track.

And anti-satellite missile tests by Russia, China and India have blown up dead spacecraft in orbit and sent thousands of pieces of debris into the air.

Each of these events created its own field of dangerous debris that continues to shoot around the planet today with potentially dire consequences.

For example, astronauts on the International Space Station receive debris alerts several times a year and prepare to evacuate if the station is hit. When this happens, spaceships docked at the station fire their engines to push it out of the way.

Satellite operators often respond to warnings by moving their satellites out of harm’s way. SpaceX told the FCC in July that its satellites performed nearly 50,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in the first half of the year alone, Space.com reported.

Unfortunately, not all satellites are maneuverable.

In March, NASA stood by as a long-dead Russian spacecraft hurtled toward the agency’s TIMED satellite, which was developed in the 1990s and is unable to move on command.

Fortunately, the two spacecraft missed each other by 17 meters (56 feet) – not very far by space standards.

“That would have been a high-velocity impact that would have created thousands of pieces of debris,” Berger said.

Daniel Baker, head of the Atmospheric and Space Physics Laboratory at UC Boulder, called on the US Congress to pass the ORBITS Act. The legislation would require federal agencies like NASA and the FCC to support technologies that can remove debris from orbit.

“I believe we are watching the tragedy of the commons unfold in low Earth orbit right before our eyes,” Baker said in the press conference.

“We must take the matter seriously and recognize that if we do nothing, we are in imminent danger of rendering an entire part of our environment on Earth unusable,” he added.

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