Space junk targeted for cleanup mission was hit by different space junk, making more space junk On Tuesday, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that a decade-old piece of space junk it had targeted for removal in a future space debris cleanup has been whacked by another piece of stray kit, thereby increasing the amount of trash in orbit around Earth. The 112kg rocket part – named VEga Secondary Payload Adapter ( …
Humanity, as a whole, has a tendancy of not caring if it doesn't seem to matter. The only problem with that attitude, is that we often cannot see how it matters before it is too late, or at least much more expensive to correct.
That is why we are choking the sea with plastics coming from bags that have been carelessly thrown out a car window, or left on the beach because the trash can was five meters too far away.
In space, it has been the same thing. The entire space industry has, since the beginning, operated on a it-doesn't-matter attitude. Leftover rocket booster lounging around at 600+ kilometers ? Doesn't matter, it'll end up coming down.
Except that, since the decades we have been throwing stuff up there (and given the cost, with pretty good reason, generally speaking), all those remaining objects are now starting to clutter up Earth's orbital space and becoming, if not yet a danger, a clear nuisance.
All of that because of our human reflex. Like the smoker who just chucks his cigarette butt instead of putting it in the trash bin.
We will end up paying for that as well, in time.
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out
"But then, of course, it was too late
The garbage reached across the state
From New York to the Golden Gate
And there, in the garbage she did hate
Poor Sarah met an awful fate"
Probably not a concern. Any manned interplanetary mission is going to spend very little time at the altitudes where junk persists -- they'll start in low orbit, where junk de-orbits itself due to atmospheric drag, and then move to a transfer orbit that's well above any significant amount of junk.
The concern is that certain orbits useful for satellites could end up unusable, if it gets bad enough.
All living organisms dump their trash without thought of consequences (most of course don't have the capacity to think about it anyway). But humans are the only organisms that dump non-biodegradable trash without thought. As we've changed the nature of the trash, maybe we should start to think about the consequences as well -- we are equipped to do so, we just haven't bothered to. And it's not a new problem -- the majority of interesting archaeology is based on analysis of ancient rubbish tips. But the big problems we now face are the sheer volume and durability of the junk we now produce.
Our acreage belongs to the (mostly feral[0]) cats, but they share it with us in return for fresh water, a place to sleep away from the coyotes, and a little quality chow. They also share with the folks east, west, and south of us (all of whom understand cats). The cats pee and poop at the outer corners of the ranch, where it won't get in anybody's way[1] ... and in the fancy rose garden and pool area of the asshole who lives just north of us. He hates cats, and they carefully return the favo(u)r.
The idiot to the north is clueless, and has had had a serious rodent problem for the couple decades that he has lived there ... Strangely enough, we don't, and neither do the neighbors to the east, west and south. I wonder why.
[0] Most of them get trapped at least once for spay/neuter and basic injections (difficult or impossible to live trap a feral cat more than once) ... According to the vet, they probably titer out for things like rabies for as long as they live, which isn't long. Sad to say, the ferals are part of the food chain here in Northern California.
[1] The more domestic house cats have a litterbox, but never use it. They use the doggie-door and do their business at the far end of the dog run, or further afield if they have a mind to.
In fairness, the waste excreted by a bunch of cyanobacteria about 2 billion years ago is so long-lived that it can be detected in our atmosphere today. And it was so toxic it produced an 80% reduction in the mass of the biosphere. The particular noxious chemical in question is called oxygen.
Sadly, it is the consumer based society, that wants better, larger, sometimes cheaper, mostly more expensive products and the corporations who know they can make money by making production life cycles far shorter than the actual longevity of the device itself.
And of course the corporations love this as the new "shiny" creates a false market and brand followers will be desperate to buy the new product and will ditch the perfectly acceptable and still working old version.
Many companies change product ranges almost every year and these policies should be curtailed. Certain car companies do this every year, and many consumer electronics firms have followed the same path. :-(
And all of these new versions require new packaging, new manuals, more advertising, and many older products end up as landfill if they are broken or have no resale value.
Some areas might have recycling facilities, but as has been documented, too many people try to recycle and there isn't the infrastructure to deal with it all...for instance, leading some UK councils exporting their waste to foreign countries by the container load.
It is certainly time us humans got our act together and instead of contaminating this planet, with all our waste, we individually all take personal responsibility to preserve it, in our own small way.
"Humanity, as a whole, has a tendancy of not caring if it doesn't seem to matter. The only problem with that attitude, is that we often cannot see how it matters before it is too late, or at least much more expensive to correct."
It applies to more than rubbish. It's called "the tragedy of the commons".
"Preliminary investigations indicate that "the main object remains intact and has experienced no significant alteration to its orbit." "
...
"The newly splintered parts of VESPA were detected"
Seems like a very wide interpretation of "remains intact" if there are multiple parts that broke off which are big enough to be individually detected. I am by no way a materials expert, but AFAIK most of the material parts of rockets are metals or composites, both of which are brittle especially at cold temperatures. Therefore there is a higher probability even when being impacted by a much smaller object to not be perforated / punctured, but to shatter (or for any perforation to be accompanied by cracks in the structure making it far more prone to shatter when any subsequent force is applied).
Materials that are more plastic in their behaviour would not suffer from this so much, but then presumably would be less suitable to withstand the forces sustained during launch. No easy answers it seems, but it's good that actual rocket scientists are looking into the space junk problem, because it's only going to get bigger.
I would prefer Twitler in jail for securities fraud - the good news is he is ignoring some consent decrees that kept him out of court so might actually face proper consequences.
Starlink satellites are launched to a low orbit so any failures quickly drop and burn up. Working satellites raise their orbit for the operational life time and lower it again before they run out of propellant. Their operational orbit is low enough to come down without help before there is time to build up significant risk of Kessler syndrome. For the best chance of a Kessler cascade the orbit must be high enough to last but low enough to keep the orbital period fast and the volume of space relatively small. Oneweb satellites are in the sweet spot so have redundant de-orbiting systems. It is almost as if these constellations were designed by rocket scientists and not the fools that post ignorant comments on social media.
"Starlink satellites are launched to a low orbit so any failures quickly drop and burn up."
"Quickly can be years. Starlink, according to Elon, is planned to fill out at 42,000 satellites. Gwynne has said the expected service life is 5 years after which each sat needs to be replaced. Somewhere around 3% of Starlink sats have already failed which is 10's to 12's of them just orbiting out of control and will continue to do so for a few years.
> Can someone explain to me how a hyper-velocity impact with a satellite fails, enough to break chunks off, does not result is a significant effect on the orbit?
Not sure what the actual numbers are here, but:
1 tonne (1 Mg) stage in orbit.
10g "thing" smacks into the stage at 10,000 m/s relative to the orbiting stage. That's quite a bang, and could easily crack something off, but it changes the momentum by 100,000 gm/s - which is a change in velocity of 10cm/second. Typical LEO orbital velocities are about 8,000 m/s (which is why I chose 10,000).
Net result: The orbit changed (of course), but not significantly. A 10kg bullet would make more of a difference - but it would still be pretty small.
"Can someone explain to me how a hyper-velocity impact with a satellite fails, enough to break chunks off, does not result is a significant effect on the orbit?"
It could set the part spinning, but I'd agree that the orbit would be perturbed. It might even be pushed into a higher orbit that decays even more slowly.
This stuff is just going so darned fast. Your net, by catching the orbiting nut or flake of paint has to change it's velocity from the very high speeds these things have to the slower speed of your net. Even though these items are tiny, the amount of kinetic energy is enormous. Punch-holes-in-steel enormous. So your "net" would not actually stop much.
Rather than a 'net' it would have to be something like a giant block of ballistic gel. Maybe a sort of quick-setting foam that can be taken up in a relatively small pressurised canister and could expand its volume hundreds or thousands of times before it sets. If the speed differential isn't too high it would trap the debris inside, and if not it would at least slow the debris down which would make natural de-orbiting quicker.
A 0.5 kg (1.1lb to our transatlantic cousins) has a Kinetic Energy energy of 14 MegaJoules should it hit a stationary object.
Of couse if the other object is travelling in the opposite direction then this would be the sum of the two kinetic energies.
Anyway, to put this into perspective, 1 kg of TNT has 4.184 megajoules of energy, so the KE of an object in LEA (about 17,000mph / 7600m/s) is equivalent to aproximately 3kg of TNT.
Sooner or later a very small object is going to make a very large dent in a very important lump of spaceware.
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