Space junk problem

Each of us knows that humanity has incredibly shattered its planet and continues to generate an incredible amount of garbage every day. But few know that for a short period of space exploration, we managed to turn the near-Earth space into a small dump of spent satellites. Here are two interactive visualizations that reflect the current situation.

The first visualization (by Alex Rasmussen ) reflects all known and tracked satellites and fragments:
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• Green dots indicate active satellites.
• Gray - inactive, but workable.
• Red - failed satellites and their fragments.

The European Space Agency has found that it’s revolving around the earth now:

• about 29,000 debris larger than 10 cm
• about 670,000 debris from 1 to 10 cm,
• more than 170 million fragments from 1 mm to 1 cm.

The total mass of debris in near-Earth space is estimated at 6300 tons, the flight speed can reach 56,000 km / hour.



Link to the online version .

Over the past 50 years , about 6,600 satellites have been launched , of which 3,600 still revolve around the Earth, and 1,000 are in active mode.

How dangerous is all this garbage?

Presented visualization can be misleading, because the dots indicate only the location of the debris, but not the size, that is, the scale is not met. In reality, near-Earth space does not represent a landfill at all, as it looks in the pictures. However, the space agencies of different countries are all the same alert, because the cost of the launched objects is very high, and the potential damage from the loss of 1000 satellites currently operating as a result of collisions with debris is estimated at $ 130 billion.



Every year, 100-150 tons of debris enter the earth’s atmosphere. The most notable case in recent years was the collision of German and American satellites , whose fragments fell into the Bay of Bengal in 2011. Astronauts in orbit also should not relax (hello "Gravity"). In 2012, the ISS was transferred to a higher orbit to prevent collisions with debris from a Japanese satellite.

What to do?

Fortunately, the repetition of the scenario in the image of "Gravity" is unlikely. Moreover, the engineers have provided a lot of protection (the ISS is considered "the most protected spacecraft in history "). However, the speed of flight and the growing amount of debris pose an increasing threat. Scientists warn about the possibility of Kessler's syndrome , when there are so many debris in orbit that the risk of destroying any device launched will be very high. Such a chain reaction may, in fact, close humanity access to space.

Today, scientists are looking for ways to track debris and clean space. One of the many ideas is to use special satellites that will capture debris and direct it to the surface of the planet. Also considered is the option of collecting more usable debris for the sake of recycling.

Whatever method is chosen in the future, one thing is sure: the littering of the nearest outer space will cost us dearly. If we still want to have access beyond our planet, to have modern satellite communications, observation and research, then we need to start exploring possible ways to get rid of orbital debris.









By following the link to the original article, you can evaluate the interactivity of visualizations. Unfortunately, to embed them in the post Habr does not allow, I had to take screenshots.