ISS flees space debris collision with Russian weapons test destroys satellite

Russia launched one of its Soviet-era satellites in a weapons test on Monday, sending it off More than 1,500 pieces of waste tracking to space. This forced the astronauts To protect the International Space Station about two hours two spaceships that they can return to Earth in the event of a collision. Although the ISS seems clear at the moment, experts say the situation is still dangerous. Satellite operators will likely have to navigate around this new cloud of space junk for years and maybe decades.

In fact, recent tests on Russian missiles may have increased the total amount space junk, Including rocket and satellite fragments thrown into Earth orbit, age 10 percent. These parts are rotating at an extremely fast speed and are at risk of hitting active satellites that feed critical technologies, for example. GPS navigation and weather forecast. Spatial debris like this is so dangerous that national security officials are concerned that it could be used as a weapon. future space war. In fact, the State Department has already said Monday’s missile test that Russia is ready to create debris that threatens the safety of all countries operating in Earth’s lower orbit, as well as the risk of breaking the peace of space.

These risks have only exacerbated concerns that we are far from solving the problem of space junk, especially as they are launched by private companies and foreign governments. thousands of new satellites in orbit – inevitably creating even more garbage space.

Monday’s events, however, were more politically serious than the average event of your space debris. The Russian government launched the so-called anti-satellite test (ASAT), as the name suggests, is designed to destroy satellites in orbit. Starting from a site Hundreds of miles north of Moscow, the missile struck a non-operational Russian satellite spy Called the Cosmos-1408, which has been orbiting the Earth since 1982. The satellite is now broken into thousands of pieces orbiting the Earth at about 17,000 kilometers per hour, orbiting the International Space Station at approximately 90 minutes. While astronauts no longer need to be protected, the threat to the ISS or other satellites has not disappeared.

“I am angry with this irresponsible and unstable action” Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator he said in a statement. “With its long and long history of human flight, it is unthinkable that Russia could endanger not only American astronauts and international partners on the ISS, but also their cosmonauts.” Nelson added that Russia’s actions were “reckless and dangerous” and endangered those on the Chinese Tiangong space station.

While Russia approved the destruction of a satellite in the final test, its Ministry of Defense stressed the event he did not endanger the ISS.

Russia is one of them four countries, Including India, the US and China, to detonate its satellite using an anti-satellite missile. This trend is worrying because governments with ASAT systems can use technology to attack satellites in other countries, turning space into a battlefield. But even if countries focus only on their space objects, Russia’s missile test shows how governments can also use anti-satellite missiles to create debris that puts every country, company or person operating in orbit at risk. And again, once that waste is generated, it can continue to be a threat for years to come. Last week, the ISS had to do it adjust its height about a mile to avoid the debris of the space debris of a satellite launched by China in 2007.

The problem of space junk is growing, too. Right now, there are more than 100 million pieces of garbage in space larger than a millimeter Around the Earth, according to NASA. And from May, the Department of Defense follow up more than 27,000 parts of orbital debris, but smaller parts can still pose a high risk. other satellites and space stations due to the extremely high speed at which they travel.

“I don’t think you can say too much about the risk of space debris right now,” Wendy Whitman Cobb, a professor at the U.S. Air Force School of Air and Space Studies, told Recode. “As you generate more waste, the chances of that waste hitting other things and creating more waste increase.”

What makes the problem of space junk particularly difficult is that no one has taken responsibility for it. according to Outer Space Pact, the basis of international space law, countries continue to own the objects they send into space, so Russia still technically owns all the satellite parts created by its Monday missile tests. There is no global consensus on what penalties are it should be the creation of space junk, and it is still difficult to track and attribute different pieces of waste to space operations in different countries.

They are government agencies and private space companies developing technology to get rid of space junk, so do networks may take debris into orbit and devices which would push the satellites into the atmosphere to disintegrate. But there is concern that governments may use the same tools to remove satellites from another country. At the same time, the cost of creating and disposing of space debris is rarely taken into account when deciding to launch a vehicle or satellite into space.

“In many ways, it’s the same kind of problem, the environmental problem we’ve dealt with on so many different formats on Earth,” Akhil Rao said. Middlebury economist who has studied space debris, Recode said. “We have fought the collapse of fishing, we have fought the pollution of the atmosphere, [and] we have fought the depletion of ozone. ‘

Right now, the best way we can improve the risk of orbital debris is to first avoid creating space debris. This can happen through better international cooperation or by creating new economic incentives for private companies, but the sooner it happens, the better. Although we are generally able to navigate existing space debris, this will become increasingly difficult as more debris accumulates. And if we don’t find a solution in time, we could end up in a situation where Earth’s low-orbit orbit is full of space junk, where it’s unmanageable.