The <keyword id="59844" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="european-space-agency" source="Orion">European Space Agency</keyword>'s (<keyword id="191401" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="esa" source="Orion">ESA</keyword>) said its Earth-observing Sentinel-1A satellite barely escaped a "high-risk collision" from a 2021 Russian missile test that had generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris in space.<br /><br />ESA's Sentinel-1 mission is designed as a two-satellite constellation, which provides an all-weather, day-and-night supply of imagery of <keyword id="6359982" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="earth" source="Orion">Earth</keyword>'s surface.<br /><br />In a series of tweets on Wednesday, the ESA officials said Sentinel-1A, launched in April 2014, had to perform a set of emergency manoeuvres on Monday to avoid a "high-risk collision."<br /><br />"On Monday, for the first time, we performed a set of manoeuvres to avoid a high-risk collision with #SpaceDebris created in the #Cosmos1408 anti-satellite test last year," ESA Operations said.<br /><br />The agency noted that although its part of their routine work, yet this "was a difficult #CollisionAvoidance manoeuvre", "unique" as well as "tricky to avoid" because the situation evolved rapidly, and they had less than 24 hours of warning.<br /><br />Even though the Russian satellite orbited more than 200 km below Sentinel-1A, the energy released during its explosion pushed fragments of it all the way up, intersecting the satellite's orbit.<br /><br />As a result, the team said Sentinal-1A had to alter its orbit "by 140 m in order to prevent collision with a debris fragment".<br /><br />Though the Sentinel-1A is safe for now, the ESA called out against the threat due to such space debris.<br /><br />"Quick reaction by teams at #MissionControl, who managed to plan and execute an avoidance manoeuvre in a matter of hours, meant we safely avoided impact," they said.<br /><br />"This incident highlights the devastating risks to the whole space environment from the (intentional) creation of space debris," they added.<br /><br />In November 2021, Russia fired a direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missile that collided with its defunct satellite, generating hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris, or space junk. The DA-ASAT test also posed risk to the <keyword id="6382020" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="international-space-station" source="Orion">International Space Station</keyword>, at that time prompting an outrage by the US.<br /><br />According to the <keyword id="183676" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="us-department-of-state" source="Orion">US Department of State</keyword>, the anti-satellite test generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threaten the interests of all nations.<br /><br />"...I'm outraged by this irresponsible and destabilising action. Their actions are reckless and dangerous, threatening as well the Chinese space station and the taikonauts on board," <keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword> Administrator <keyword id="252415" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="bill-nelson" source="Orion">Bill Nelson</keyword> had said condemning the act.<br /><br />SEE ALSO:<br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/google-russia-has-no-money-to-pay-salaries-to-its-100-employees-heads-for-bankruptcy/articleshow/91658749.cms">Google Russia has no money to pay salaries to its 100 employees, heads for bankruptcy</a><br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/entertainment/news/late-comic-book-legend-stan-lee-set-to-live-again-in-movies-as-marvel-studios-signs-20-year-deal/articleshow/91655455.cms">Late comic book legend Stan Lee set to live again in movies as Marvel Studios signs 20-year deal</a><br />

ESA satellite Sentinel-1A dodges a 'high-risk collision' from Russian space debris

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Photos from Borneo and the Philippines appear to show large fragments of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/falling-space-junk-spacex-nasa-china-foreshadow-increasing-injury-risk-2022-8">space junk that fell to Earth</a>.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-postpones-astronauts-spacewalk-due-to-possible-space-junk-danger-2021-11">Space-debris</a> experts say the mystery objects are parts of China's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-set-to-launch-space-station-module-possible-runaway-rocket-2022-7">Long March 5B rocket</a>.</li></ul><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/falling-space-junk-spacex-nasa-china-foreshadow-increasing-injury-risk-2022-8">Mysterious large pieces of wreckage</a> were discovered across Southeast Asia over the weekend, and evidence is growing that they came from a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/debris-chinese-rocket-booster-plummeting-unknown-location-earth-2022-7">Chinese rocket booster that fell</a> to Earth uncontrolled.</p><p>The booster of China's 25-ton Long March 5B rocket pushed a new segment of the country's space station into orbit in late July. Then, instead of pushing itself into the Pacific Ocean — a standard practice called controlled reentry — the booster entered Earth's orbit and slowly lost altitude over the course of a week, ensuring that it would fall randomly in an unpredictable location.</p><p>On Saturday, the booster succumbed to gravity and fell to Earth, breaking apart in the atmosphere. Soon photos of scattered objects that appear to be parts of the rocket emerged from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines — along the path of the booster's uncontrolled fall.</p><div type="image" title="two people in white hazmat suits holding sensors crouch in a forest" height="468" width="1040" msid="93378811" hostid="261" sizebytes="84334"></div><p>Only China can officially confirm that those pieces belong to its rocket booster, but orbital-debris experts say they have no doubt that the mystery objects are chunks of Long March 5B.</p><p>"They sure look like rocket parts to me," Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant for the Aerospace Corporation's Chief Engineer's Office, told Insider, adding, "I've got no reason to dispute that it's pieces of this rocket."</p><p>There's a roughly 10% chance that debris will hit one or more people within a decade, according to a <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41550-022-01718-8%23Sec5&amp;amazonTrackingID=null&amp;site=bi&amp;vikingID=62eabb2f7860f14a6c4c7343&amp;platform=browser&amp;sc=false&amp;disabled=false&amp;sessionID=1659649274728ggx74uzi" rel="nofollow sponsored noindex">study</a> published in the journal Nature in July.</p><p>Even if they don't strike anybody, pieces of spacecraft that have fallen through the atmosphere are dangerous to approach because rocket fuel can linger on them.</p><h2>Photos suggest the booster disintegrated piece by piece as it fell</h2><div type="image" title="large rounded metal sheet in a field surrounded by yellow tape and a handful of people" height="1344" width="2880" msid="93378813" hostid="261" sizebytes="152864"></div><p>In the village of Pengadang, near Balaikarangan, on the Indonesian side of the island of Borneo, locals discovered a large rounded object resembling the Chinese rocket's core stage. The image above comes from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/www.borneo.network/videos/3301918316710044/">Borneo News Network</a> footage.</p><p>"There's a picture of the big piece at the end of the fuel tank sitting on a field that's very convincing. It's the right diameter. It looks like a piece that sort of survived reentry — and is right on the path of the reentry," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and avid tracker of objects in Earth's orbit, told Insider.</p><div type="image" title="map shows region of borneo with orange line representing rocket booster path right over Balaikarangan" height="627" width="836" msid="93378815" hostid="261" sizebytes="59854"></div><p>Muelhaupt agreed that object looks like the dome of a fuel tank.</p><p>Two smaller pieces of debris were discovered in the small towns of Batu Niah and Sepupok in Sarawak, on the Malaysian side of Borneo, according to the Borneo News Network and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiISj1IiYko">The Star</a>, a Malaysian news outlet.</p><div type="image" title="map shows region of borneo with orange line representing rocket booster path near Batu Niah" height="638" width="851" msid="93378817" hostid="261" sizebytes="45300"></div><p>Photos show "a little piece of metal dug in the ground, which may well be a bit of the rocket, but it's just too hard to tell," McDowell said.</p><h2>The rocket's launch dropped debris, too</h2><div type="image" title="large white rocket with arrow pointing to red Chinese flag and blue Chinese space agency symbol" height="1419" width="1893" msid="93378819" hostid="261" sizebytes="254344"></div><p>Images circulated on China's social media platform <a href="https://t.co/rr6hcjYq6K">Weibo</a> claimed to show pieces of the rocket's fairing, which falls away during launch, in the Philippines' Mindoro Strait. The photos, which Insider has not independently verified, show people pulling panels from the water marked with the same Chinese flag and blue space-agency symbol that are on the rocket fairing.</p><p>On Wednesday, the <a href="https://philsa.gov.ph/news/philsa-confirms-part-of-long-march-5b-found-in-wps/">Philippine Space Agency</a> released a statement saying the torn metal sheet found by fisherman off the coast of Mamburao was part of the rocket's fairing. The agency also <a href="https://philsa.gov.ph/news/public-advisory-on-the-re-entry-of-long-march-5b-debris/">said</a> that parts of the falling booster may have dropped off the coast, in the Sulu Sea.</p><p>McDowell and Muelhaupt also said they believe these images show parts of the rocket fairing, dropped during launch.</p><div type="image" title="Debris suspected to be from a Chinese booster rocket in Borneo." height="960" width="1280" msid="93378821" hostid="261" sizebytes="254112"></div><p>Then, when the rocket's booster fell from space, its descent path carried it right over the Mindoro Strait.</p><p>"This means we've been hit twice by debris from this launch: at the beginning, and at the end of the rocket's flight," Jay Batongbacal, a professor at the University of the Philippines Institute for the Maritime Affairs and the Law of the Sea, told Philippine news outlet <a href="https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1639723/chinese-rocket-debris-found-near-mindoro-strait">the Inquirer</a>. "This shows that the risk is higher for us, because we are under the flight path of most Chinese rocket launches," he said.</p><p>However, no government agency has reported debris from the uncontrolled fall in the Philippines.</p><p>This is the third time China has launched a Long March 5B rocket and allowed its body to fall to Earth uncontrolled. In May 2021, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-long-march-5b-rocket-parts-may-rain-down-2021-5">pieces of another</a> Long March 5B landed in the Indian Ocean. And in May of 2020, another launch ended in an uncontrolled fall that dumped debris near two villages in <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21256484/china-rocket-debris-africa-uncontrolled-reentry-long-march-5b">Ivory Coast</a>, leading to <a href="https://afriksoir.net/cote-divoire-la-gendarmerie-debute-une-enquete-sur-lobjet-metallique-mysterieux-tombe-du-ciel-a-mahounou/">reports</a> of property damage.</p>

Mystery wreckage in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines is probably fallen Chinese rocket parts, space-debris experts say

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A secretive Russian satellite broke apart in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/falling-space-junk-spacex-nasa-china-foreshadow-increasing-injury-risk-2022-8">Earth's orbit</a>, the US Space Force said on Monday.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-satellites-that-could-be-equipped-lasers-explosives-are-move-again-2017-5">Kosmos 2499 launched secretly and made "suspicious" maneuvers</a> to complete a mysterious mission.</li></ul><p>A mysterious Russian satellite with a shady mission has broken apart in Earth's orbit, creating a hazardous cloud of debris zipping around the planet and menacing other satellites, US Space Force announced.</p><p>The 18th Space Defense Squadron <a href="https://twitter.com/18thSDS/status/1622752004388032512">said on Twitter</a> Monday that it had confirmed a satellite called <a href="https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=2014-028E" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kosmos 2499</a> had broken apart into 85 pieces.</p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet blockquote" data-lang="en" data-cards="" data-conversation="">—18th Space Defense Squadron (@18thSDS) <a href="https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/1622752004388032512">February 7, 2023</a></blockquote><p>Previous collisions and satellite break-ups have created far <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-added-1500-space-junk-in-orbit-satelite-test-missile-2021-11">larger and more hazardous debris fields</a> than this.</p><p>But the pieces of Kosmos 2499 are orbiting at an altitude of about 745 miles — so high that they'll probably be there for a century or longer before Earth's atmosphere drags them down and burns them up, according to <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news/debris_faq.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a>.</p><p>Kosmos 2499 is one of three satellites that Russia launched secretly from 2013 to 2015. Its beginning is even more mysterious than its end.</p><p>NASA and the US Department of Defense did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.</p><h2>The satellite was launched secretly and made 'suspicious' maneuvers in orbit</h2><div type="image" title="rocket spews orange flame lifts off in the arctic" height="2048" width="1526" msid="97749032" hostid="261"></div><p>On Christmas Day 2013, Russia launched a small Rokot rocket into the skies above Plesetsk, carrying three military communications satellites into orbit.</p><p>It seemed like a standard launch, until space trackers noticed that the Rokot had released a fourth object into orbit, <a href="https://russianspaceweb.com/Cosmos-2499.html#2023">according</a> to Anatoly Zak, an English-language reporter who covers Russia's space program and runs Russianspaceweb.com.</p><p>A few months later, Russia admitted to the United Nations that it had launched a fourth satellite, which came to be known as Kosmos 2491. Its purpose was unclear.</p><p>Russia launched another secret satellite in May 2014, and it soon began maneuvering itself in orbit, dropping and raising its altitude until it brought itself "suspiciously close" to the rocket stage that had delivered it to orbit, according to Zak. The US military designated the object Kosmos 2499.</p><p>For nearly half a year, this mystery satellite trailed its rocket stage and maneuvered up close to it repeatedly. Then it transmitted telemetry data back to Earth in Morse code, according to Zak.</p><p>The bizarre behavior led to speculation that Russia was testing technology to follow or wreck other satellites, according to <a href="https://www.space.com/russian-satellite-kosmos-2499-breakup-earth-orbit">Space.com</a>.</p><p>The head of Roscosmos at the time, Oleg Ostapenko, assured the world in a December 2014 press conference that Kosmos 2491 and Kosmos 2499 were not "killer satellites," Zak reported. Ostapenko said the satellites had peaceful, educational purposes and that "they completed their mission." Zak said the Roscosmos chief never specified what that mission was.</p><p>A similar Rokot launch sent a third unregistered satellite into orbit the next year.</p><p>The first secret satellite, Kosmos 2491, broke apart in 2019. Kosmos 2499 just met the same fate.</p><h2>The satellite may have exploded, rather than crashing</h2><p>The cause of the satellite's disintegration is not yet clear.</p><p>Brian Weeden, a space-debris expert at the Secure World Foundation, told <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/mysterious-russian-satellites-are-now-breaking-apart-in-low-earth-orbit/">ArsTechnica</a> that he doesn't think a collision caused it, since two of the secretive satellites have gone out like this.</p><p>"This suggests to me that perhaps these events are the result of a design error in the fuel tanks or other systems that are rupturing after several years in space rather than something like a collision with a piece of debris," Weeden told ArsTechnica.</p><p>That aligns with a preliminary analysis by LeoLabs, a company that tracks objects in Earth's orbit. The company <a href="https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1623387025725353985">tweeted</a> that its early data "points toward a low intensity explosion," likely from the satellite's propulsion system.</p><p>LeoLabs said its models had "moderate confidence" in this finding.</p><p>"As more of the fragments get cataloged and included in the analysis we will be able to provide a more definitive cause of the event," the company wrote, adding that "understanding why these types of events occur is key to preventing them in the future."</p>

A secret Russian satellite has broken apart in orbit, creating a cloud of debris that could last a century

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-postpones-astronauts-spacewalk-due-to-possible-space-junk-danger-2021-11">Space junk</a>, apparently from <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/debris-chinese-rocket-booster-plummeting-unknown-location-earth-2022-7">China</a> and a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-debris-australia-farmland-likely-spacex-crew-1-astrophysicist-2022-8">SpaceX</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/images-show-james-webb-space-telescope-stronger-sharper-than-hubble-2022-7">NASA</a> mission, fell to Earth and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-satellite-russian-rocket-piece-may-have-crashed-in-space-2021-8">crashed</a> on land.</li><li>There's a 10% chance a person will be hit by falling <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/international-space-station-swerves-to-avoid-rocket-debris-2021-12">space debris</a> within a decade, researchers calculated.</li></ul><p>It's raining rocket parts, and space-junk experts fear that someday a chunk of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/debris-chinese-rocket-booster-plummeting-unknown-location-earth-2022-7">debris falling</a> from Earth's orbit will strike a person.</p><p>The booster of a 25-ton Long March 5B rocket, which pushed part of China's new space station into orbit in late July, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/debris-chinese-rocket-booster-plummeting-unknown-location-earth-2022-7">crashed back to Earth</a> on Saturday.</p><p>Though some of the booster probably burned up as it plummeted through Earth's atmosphere, <a href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0Zk3ZGBFTEZ4DUdfcTsnTXtuSsPVBFDVdoKmX9GuMFKWxeTpbqut2E4VaAqatCuynl&amp;id=107175285204148">reports</a> indicate that parts of the rocket may have survived the fall and crashed near inhabited areas of Borneo, an island in Southeast Asia. Debris was found on both the Malaysian and Indonesian sides of the island, as well as in the ocean near the <a href="https://twitter.com/CNSAWatcher/status/1554514723843948544">Philippines</a>. The locations of the debris reports were along the path of the booster's reentry into the atmosphere, previously calculated by orbital-debris experts.</p><div type="image" title="large rounded metal sheet in a field surrounded by yellow tape and a handful of people" height="1344" width="2880" msid="93355966" hostid="261"></div><p>"They sure look like rocket parts to me," Ted Muelhaupt, a consultant for the Aerospace Corporation's Chief Engineer's Office, told Insider, adding, "I've got no reason to dispute that it's pieces of this rocket."</p><p>In July, a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-debris-australia-farmland-likely-spacex-crew-1-astrophysicist-2022-8">shepherd in Australia</a> discovered a mysterious piece of debris sticking out of the ground, standing nearly 10 feet tall. On Wednesday, the Australian Space Agency <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/03/spacex-capsule-confirmed-as-source-of-debris-that-landed-on-australian-farm">said</a> the giant piece of hardware came from the discarded trunk of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship, which carried astronauts for NASA last year.</p><div type="image" title="A piece of space junk is shown on a field in Australia in New South Wales, Australia." height="1700" width="2542" msid="93355967" hostid="261"></div><p>Only China and SpaceX can confirm that these pieces come from their spacecraft. But experts like Muelhaupt say they believe the reports.</p><p>"There's no doubt in my mind," Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who meticulously tracks objects in Earth's orbit, told Insider.</p><p>These are just a couple of striking examples of a widespread phenomenon. Every day, multiple man-made objects fall out of orbit and back to Earth, according to Muelhaupt, who works on the Aerospace Corporation's <a href="https://aerospace.org/reentries">reentry database</a>.</p><p>Many space objects burn up in the atmosphere, but chunks of material regularly survive the fall. Experts at the Aerospace Corporation say that up to 40% of the mass of a large space object falling from orbit will reach the ground. About once a week, an object that weighs at least 1 ton falls from orbit and reenters the atmosphere, Muelhaupt said.</p><p>In a <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41550-022-01718-8%23Sec5">study</a> published in the journal Nature in July, researchers calculated a roughly 10% chance that debris will strike one or more people within a 10-year period.</p><p>"If you roll the dice too many times, someone will get lucky," McDowell said.</p><h2>Crowded skies mean more falling space debris</h2><div type="image" title="Debris found in a field in new south Wales." height="1558" width="2078" msid="93355968" hostid="261"></div><p>Normally, after a launch, rocket boosters push themselves into the remotest part of the Pacific Ocean — a process called "controlled reentry." Smaller discarded objects, like the trunk of a Crew Dragon, are supposed to either burn up in the atmosphere or enter orbit around Earth and stay there.</p><p>But in the case of the Long March 5B, China didn't design the rocket booster for controlled reentry. Instead, it fell back to Earth randomly each of the three times it launched. In May 2020, debris from one of those rockets was discovered near two villages in Ivory Coast, reportedly causing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-rocket-falling-earth-11-similar-space-station-2021-5">property damage</a>.</p><div type="image" title="Long March-5B Y2 rocket" height="1334" width="1778" msid="93355969" hostid="261"></div><p>The Long March 5B boosters are among the largest objects to fall back to Earth, but uncontrolled reentry isn't unique to China. In 1979, NASA's Skylab space station rapidly descended, scattering debris over Australia. Today, though, controlled reentry is standard practice.</p><p>Despite the uptick in space activity in recent years, defunct space objects are increasingly being brought down to Earth under control. "Whereas 30 years ago, a rocket stage would have been left in orbit and done an uncontrolled reentry some years later," McDowell said. </p><p>Still, Muelhaupt fears there will be more frequent falling-junk incidents — like the chunk of Crew Dragon that landed in Australia — in the future. In spaceflight, the standard acceptable level of risk to human life is one in 10,000. But when companies like SpaceX plan to launch tens of thousands of satellites into orbit, those odds mean a few of them will drop chunks of metal to Earth.</p><div type="image" title="Illustration of SpaceX's Starlink network of satellites." height="3588" width="4784" msid="93355971" hostid="261"></div><p>Between multiple companies launching satellite constellations and more space agencies flying spacecraft, there's an increasing chance that debris will land somewhere densely populated.</p><p>"You do it often enough, you do it long enough, you're going to get lucky and bring it down in the middle of a city park," Muelhaupt said. </p><h2>Taking out the space trash</h2><p>For now, the best way to prevent space-junk disaster is to convince all countries and companies to commit to practicing controlled reentry.</p><p>"The People's Republic of China did not share specific trajectory information as their Long March 5B rocket fell back to Earth," Bill Nelson, NASA's administrator, <a href="https://twitter.com/SenBillNelson/status/1553442428287328256">tweeted</a> Saturday, adding that all spacefaring nations should partake in responsible space behavior.</p><p>"Doing so is critical to the responsible use of space and to ensure the safety of people here on Earth," Nelson added.</p><div type="image" title="Support teams work around the SpaceX Crew-1 Dragon Resilience spacecraft shortly after it splashed down with astronauts from the International Space Station in May, 2021." height="2088" width="2784" msid="93355972" hostid="261"></div><p>Companies and space agencies can also study space debris to figure out why it fell from orbit, and why certain parts of it didn't burn up along the way. For example, Muelhaupt said the largest piece of suspected SpaceX debris in Australia is a section where metal connects to carbon fiber. Why that attachment broke from the rest of the spacecraft and survived the fiery plummet to Earth, is a question Muelhaupt wants answered.</p><p>"I hope they do go collect it and then tell us," Muelhaupt said.</p><p>A better understanding of debris falls could help inform real-time warning systems, both for people on the ground and for people flying planes. With passenger planes crisscrossing the planet at all times, there should be a space-debris notice for pilots, Muelhaupt said. A collision is unlikely, but if it did happen the damage would be catastrophic, especially for a commercial flight with passengers.</p><p>"The odds of hitting an unprotected individual standing in the open is one thing, but you get an aircraft in flight, now suddenly the consequences are a lot bigger," Muelhaupt said.</p><p>He fears it will take a disaster to push regulators and companies to make real change, though.</p><p>"I hate to say it: When something bad happens to somebody, that's when we react," Muelhaupt said.</p>

Photos suggest SpaceX, NASA, and China space junk struck land. There's a 10% chance a person will be hit this decade.

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="492144" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Kyoto-University">Kyoto University</keyword> is teaming up with a Japanese forestry company, Sumitomo Forestry, to develop a wooden <keyword id="6358065" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="satellite">satellite</keyword> to send into orbit.</li><li>The idea is that a device made of wood could safely burn up on reentry and reduce the amount of <keyword id="938050" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="space-junk">space junk</keyword>.</li><li>Space junk is increasingly a concern among experts, who say it poses an environmental hazard.</li></ul><p>Kyoto University is teaming up with a Japanese forestry company to develop wooden satellites to shoot into orbit by 2023 in an effort to cut down on space junk, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55463366">the BBC reported on Monday</a>.</p><p>Takao Doi, a Kyoto University professor and Japanese astronaut, told the BBC that the advantage of a wooden satellite is that if it were to fall out of orbit and burn up on reentry, it wouldn't release as many harmful particles as metal satellites.</p><p>"We are very concerned with the fact that all the satellites which re-enter the Earth's atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years," Doi said.</p><p>Doi added that "eventually it will affect the environment of the Earth."</p><p>Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry plan to experiment with how well different types of wood withstand extreme conditions on Earth, aiming to develop a wood that could take wild fluctuations in temperature and sunlight.</p><p>Space junk and debris are a growing concerns among experts.</p><p>"Space debris is increasingly of concern, and the collision of two massive space-debris objects - ranging from one to 10 metric tons - pose the greatest environmental risk," Daniel Oltrogge, the director of the Center for Space Standards and Innovation, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starship-could-help-clean-up-space-junk-in-orbit-2020-11">told Business Insider last month</a>.</p><p>Though estimates vary, Oltrogge said the CSSI believes there are about 760,000 objects larger than a centimeter in orbit.</p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-rdof-fcc-subsidy-locations-blocks-maps-2020-12?r=ih-sub">Block-by-block maps reveal where SpaceX must offer Starlink satellite internet to 642,000 homes and businesses at competitive prices</a></em></p><p>That number is ever increasing, especially as commercial companies launch their own constellations of satellites. Elon Musk's SpaceX has launched almost 900 Starlink high-speed-internet satellites, with plans to eventually launch 12,000 to 42,000.</p><p>Amazon is leading a similar project called Project Kuiper. It <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-kuiper-fcc-authorization-satellite-internet-10-billion-dollar-investement-2020-7">won approval from the Federal Communications Commission</a> in July to launch 3,236 satellites.</p>

Japan is developing wooden satellites to send into orbit by 2023 in an effort to cut down on space junk

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A chunk of an old Russian <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/huge-chinese-rocket-stage-to-fall-to-earth-uncontrolled-2021-5">rocket</a> appears to have <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/soviet-satellite-chinese-rocket-might-crash-in-space-2020-10">crashed into</a> a Chinese satellite in March.</li><li>Harvard astronomer <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-percent-failure-rate-space-debris-risk-2020-10">Jonathan McDowell</a> discovered the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-air-force-satellites-might-crash-in-space-over-pittsburgh-2020-1">collision</a> in data from the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-force-commander-fired-for-comments-made-in-podcasts-about-diversity-marxism-2021-5">Space Force</a>.</li><li>The last big satellite collision was in 2009, but more <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astroscale-mission-to-clean-up-space-junk-magnets-2021-3">old spacecraft</a> are building up in orbit.</li></ul><p>A Chinese satellite mysteriously broke apart in March, scattering into dozens of pieces. Now, a Harvard astronomer has discovered what likely happened: It seems to have collided with a chunk of a Russian rocket.</p><p>"This looks to be the first major confirmed orbital collision in a decade," Jonathan McDowell, who spotted the probable crash in a data log from the US Space Force, said on Twitter.</p><p>Space Force sensors <a href="https://twitter.com/18SPCS/status/1374067474111500290">detected</a> new debris from the breakup of the Chinese satellite, called Yunhai 1-02, in mid-March. Yunhai 1-02 launched in 2019, so it was relatively young and should have been in good enough shape to not fall apart on its own. No verdict about the cause was ever announced.</p><p>But the Space Force did quietly update its space-debris catalogue with a new hint on Saturday. Object 48078, a piece of a Russian Zenit-2 rocket that launched in 1996, is now listed with a peculiar note: "collided with satellite."</p><p>McDowell spotted that new listing and <a href="https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1426771798276943872">shared it on Twitter</a>. He went back through the orbital data and found that the Russian rocket chunk and the Yunhai satellite passed within 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of each other at the exact time and day that Yunhai broke apart.</p><p>That passing distance is within the margin of error. Both objects would have been zipping around Earth faster than a bullet, so any contact would result in an explosion of debris. The crash created 37 known bits of debris, according to McDowell, though he added that there are probably more uncatalogued pieces.</p><p>It doesn't look like the collision was "catastrophic," McDowell said, since the Yunhai satellite has made several orbital adjustments since March, indicating that <keyword id="1334" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="China">China</keyword> can still control it.</p><p>"It's a moderately big deal," McDowell told Insider. "It shows that these smaller non-catastrophic collisions are becoming a thing - we will see more and more of them."</p><h2>The dangers of <keyword id="943402" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Space-Debris">space debris</keyword></h2><div type="image" title="space junk debris earth orbit satellite collisions crashes nasa gsfc jsc" height="911" width="1214" msid="85440652" hostid="261"></div><p>The last time two large objects orbiting Earth crashed into each other was in 2009, when a defunct Russian military satellite careened into an active Iridium communications satellite above Siberia. That collision, along with a prior one in 2007, increased the amount of large debris in low-Earth orbit <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/library/find/bibliographies/space_debris">by about 70%</a>.</p><p>There have been several false alarms and close calls since then. A dead Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket body <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/soviet-satellite-chinese-rocket-might-crash-in-space-2020-10">sped past each other</a> in space in October, after orbital models suggested they were at "very high risk" of colliding. In January 2020, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-air-force-satellites-might-crash-in-space-over-pittsburgh-2020-1">a dead space telescope and an old US Air Force satellite</a> beat alarming odds of crashing over Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In both incidents, nobody could control the <keyword id="41530" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="satellites">satellites</keyword> to avoid collision.</p><p>Already, <a href="http://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers">nearly 130 million</a> bits of space junk surround Earth - from abandoned satellites, spacecraft that broke apart, and other missions. That debris travels at roughly 10 times the speed of a bullet, which is fast enough to inflict disastrous damage to vital equipment, no matter how small the pieces. Such a hit could kill astronauts on a spacecraft.</p><div type="image" title="space shuttle endeavour wing debris junk hit hole damage nasa" height="672" width="896" msid="85440654" hostid="261"></div><p>Every time objects in orbit collide, they can explode into new clouds of tiny chunks of high-speed debris. In fact, the piece of debris that hit the Chinese satellite may have broken off of the original Russian rocket in an earlier collision.</p><p>"That's all very worrying and is an additional reason why you want to remove these big objects from orbit," McDowell told <a href="https://www.space.com/space-junk-collision-chinese-satellite-yunhai-1-02">Space.com</a>, which first reported his discovery. "They can generate this other debris that's smaller."</p><p>Experts expect more near-collisions like this if nobody <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astroscale-mission-to-clean-up-space-junk-magnets-2021-3">removes</a> dead satellites and old rocket bodies from space.</p>

A Chinese satellite seems to have collided with a piece of a Russian rocket in March - the first big space crash in a decade

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6360701" type="DEFINITION" weightage="60" keywordseo="spacex">SpaceX</keyword> has launched nearly 900 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-beta-testing-public-service-licensing-military-2020-10">Starlink internet satellites</a>, with plans for a constellation of 12,000 to 42,000 spacecraft this decade.</li><li>The company says its <keyword id="41530" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="satellites">satellites</keyword> can avoid collisions using an ion drive, but about 2.5% may have failed because they are no longer maneuvering in orbit, according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell.</li><li>Orbiting satellites that can't be maneuvered can crash into other spacecraft and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-elon-musk-42000-starlink-satellites-earth-effects-stars-2020-10">generate dangerous space debris</a>.</li><li>Until recently the apparent failure rate was about 3%, but new batches of <keyword id="7612156" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="starlink">Starlink</keyword> spacecraft seem to have improved the average rate to around 2.5%.</li><li>A roughly 2.5% failure rate isn't too bad in the industry, McDowell says, but if that number holds for SpaceX's entire planned fleet, it may lead to more than 1,000 dead satellites.</li></ul><p>SpaceX is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-broke-satellite-launch-record-one-month-2020-6">launching satellites</a> into space by the dozens to realize Starlink, a globe-encircling constellation of spacecraft that beam affordable, high-speed internet <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-unlikely-winner-fcc-rural-digital-opportunity-fund-subsidy-2020-8">across Earth</a>.</p><p>So far, the scheme — envisioned by SpaceX founder <keyword id="6355315" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="elon-musk">Elon Musk</keyword> in 2015 — seems to be working. The aerospace company has even <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-enough-satellites-to-launch-public-beta-2020-10">opened a public beta test</a> across the northern US and southern Canada for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-public-beta-how-to-join-price-cost-subscription-2020-10">$99 a month</a>, plus $499 for a startup kit.</p><p>"Other countries to follow as soon as we receive regulatory approval," Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1313462965778157569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1313462965778157569%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fspacex-starlink-enough-satellites-to-launch-public-beta-2020-100-10" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a> on October 8.</p><p>However, the unprecedented project has left a trail of seemingly unresponsive spacecraft in its wake. All of the satellites are designed to be maneuverable in space using an ion engine, and even deorbit themselves to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. But satellites with malfunctioning communication or propulsion systems can fly uncontrolled and pose a hazard to other satellites, and even astronauts, circling Earth.</p><p>SpaceX launched its first batch of 60 prototypes <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-weird-deployment-video-2019-5">in May 2019</a> and, to date, has flown 895 total Starlink internet satellites. But so far around 2.5% of those spacecraft may have failed, according to data collected by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.</p><p>"I would say their failure rate is not egregious," McDowell told Business Insider in early October. "It's not worse than anybody else's failure rates. The concern is that even a normal failure rate in such a huge constellation is going to end up with a lot of bad space junk."</p><p>Some of those failures may be intentional tests, but how many (if any) is not publicly known because SpaceX hasn't released such information. As a result, astronomers like McDowell have resorted to analyzing <a href="https://www.planet4589.org/space/stats/megacon/starbad.html">satellite-movement data</a> gleaned from SpaceX and the US government, showing which Starlink satellites have fallen back toward Earth and which ones are not maneuvering. (McDowell's failure calculations do not include 45 "version 0.9" satellites that SpaceX is known to have intentionally deorbited.)</p><div type="image" title="starlink satellites flat packed stack payload falcon 9 rocket spacex twitter D7THAABVUAATipL" height="675" width="900" msid="78702204" hostid="261"></div><p>Before the end of October, McDowell was measuring a 3% apparent failure rate, but a recent reanalysis indicates improvement in the newest Starlink batches. Of the last 413 "version 1.0" satellites, only one appears to have died, giving these batches a failure rate of just 0.2%. Still, McDowell notes that many of these satellites have only been in space for a few months, so more of them are likely to fail going forward.</p><p>"Nevertheless it does seem that the reliability of the satellites has noticeably increased," he <a href="https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1321843474270965760" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a> on October 29.</p><p>SpaceX has permission from the US government to launch nearly 12,000 Starlink satellites through 2027, though it's asked to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-itc-filing-30000-additional-42000-total-2019-10">launch 30,000 more</a> for a total of nearly 42,000. In either case, SpaceX is on track to form a "megaconstellation" that outnumbers all prior spacecraft ever launched by humanity. If 3% of the maximum planned Starlink constellation fails, that could mean 1,260 dead, 550-pound satellites the size of a desk aimlessly circling the planet. A 2.5% failure rate could mean more than 1,000 inoperative spacecraft.</p><p>There were about 3,200 nonfunctional satellites in Earth's orbit as of February, according to the <a href="https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers">European Space Agency</a>. Many of these dead spacecraft regularly threaten to collide with others and create a space-debris crisis. In mid October, for example, satellite trackers flagged a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/soviet-satellite-chinese-rocket-might-crash-in-space-2020-10">"very high risk" close pass between a dead satellite and a discarded rocket body</a>, with one company calculating a 10% chance of collision. (Fortunately, they didn't.)</p><p>SpaceX says its satellites will naturally deorbit, or burn up in Earth's atmosphere, if their propulsion systems don't work. But that process can take up to five years, according to <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201014004938/https://www.starlink.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Starlink's website</a>. In the meantime, defunct satellites rocket around Earth faster than a bullet, with nobody to steer them away from other spacecraft that may fly in their path.</p><p>SpaceX did not acknowledge Business Insider's requests for comment. However, in <a href="https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=1210290" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filings</a> to the Federal Communications Commission, SpaceX has downplayed the risk, stating that it "views satellite failure to deorbit rates of 10 or 5 percent as unacceptable, and even a rate of 1 percent is unlikely."</p><p>If 1% of its satellites did fail with no capacity to maneuver, the company said, "there is approximately a 1 percent chance per decade that any failed SpaceX satellite would collide with a piece of tracked debris."</p><p>The company also claimed that its practices "effectively eliminate the chance that such rates will ever occur."</p><h2>Dead satellites can collide and build up a space-debris crisis</h2><div type="image" title="india anti satellite missile asat test mission shakti space debris junk cloud field orbit simulation march 2019 analytical graphics inc 2" height="902" width="1202" msid="78702205" hostid="261"></div><p>SpaceX is not alone in pushing to launch large numbers of internet satellites. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oneweb-to-resume-launches-in-december-eyes-commercial-service-in-2021-2020-9">OneWeb</a>, which the UK government recently <a href="https://spacenews.com/fcc-approves-oneweb-sale-as-starlink-begins-public-beta/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">purchased out of bankruptcy</a>, has already launched 74 satellites for its proposed constellation of 48,000, while Amazon aims to launch more than 3,200 for its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-project-kuiper-satellite-internet-factory-redmond-washington-2019-12">Kuiper fleet</a>. It's unclear how many dead satellites those constellations might also leave in orbit.</p><p>Since nobody can maneuver them, failed satellites sometimes hurtle toward other spacecraft — including the International Space Station and its crew of astronauts.</p><p>Even if a satellite crashes into another satellite with no humans on board, it can create perilous conditions. </p><p>"We replace two satellites with essentially two shotgun blasts of debris," Dan Ceperley, the CEO of satellite-tracking company LeoLabs, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-air-force-satellites-might-crash-in-space-over-pittsburgh-2020-1">told Business Insider in January</a>. That month, two dead satellites <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-air-force-satellites-might-crash-in-space-over-pittsburgh-2020-1">almost crossed paths</a> and exploded into hundreds of thousands of bits of debris.</p><div type="image" title="satellite debris collision experiment simulation explosion" height="1" width="1" msid="78702206" hostid="261"></div><p>It wouldn't have been the first such explosion, and it doesn't take many to exacerbate the debris problem. In 2007, China tested an anti-satellite missile by <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-anti-satellite-test" target="_blank" rel="noopener">obliterating one of its own weather satellites</a>. Two years later, one American and one Russian spacecraft accidentally collided. Those two events alone increased the amount of large debris in low-Earth orbit <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/library/find/bibliographies/space_debris">by about 70%</a>.</p><p>India conducted its own anti-satellite missile test in 2019, and the explosion created an estimated <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-anti-satellite-missile-test-space-debris-cloud-2019-3">6,500 pieces of debris</a> larger than an eraser.</p><p>All in all, more than 500 such "fragmentation events" have created nearly <a href="https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">130 million</a> bits of debris in Earth's orbit. Those chunks of debris zip around the planet at more than 17,500 mph, or roughly 10 times the speed of a bullet.</p><p>That's not only a problem for robotic spacecraft, but ones carrying people. Just last month, a piece of debris <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-unknown-orbital-debris-narrowly-missed-striking-iss-avoidance-maneuver-2020-9">careened within a mile</a> of the football field-sized space laboratory. To avoid a collision, mission controllers fired the thrusters of an attached Russian cargo spaceship to maneuver the station out of possible harm's way. The three crew members sealed themselves inside an ISS segment with a Soyuz spaceship, so they could escape if the debris struck.</p><div type="image" title="space shuttle endeavour wing debris junk hit hole damage nasa" height="672" width="896" msid="78702212" hostid="261"></div><p>If the space-junk problem gets extreme, a chain of collisions could spiral out of control and surround Earth in a practically <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-junk-kessler-syndrome-chain-reaction-prevention-2018-3">impassable field of debris</a>. This possibility is known as the Kessler syndrome, after Donald J. Kessler, who worked for NASA's Johnson Space Center and calculated in a 1978 paper that it could take hundreds or even thousands of years for such debris to clear up enough to make spaceflight safe again.</p><p>"It is a long-term effect that takes place over decades and centuries," Ted Muelhaupt, who leads The Aerospace Corporation's satellite system analysis, previously <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-air-force-satellites-might-crash-in-space-over-pittsburgh-2020-1">told</a> Business Insider. "Anything that makes a lot of debris is going to increase that risk."</p><p>The sheer number of objects in Earth's orbit may already be having a Kessler-like effect, as Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck described last week.</p><div type="image" title="space debris satellites earth orbit" height="1080" width="1440" msid="78702216" hostid="261"></div><p>"This has a massive impact on the launch side," he told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/07/business/rocket-lab-debris-launch-traffic-scn/index.html">CNN Business</a>, adding that rockets "have to try and weave their way up in between these [satellite] constellations."</p><h2>Starlink is already a space-debris hazard </h2><p>SpaceX has barely launched 2% of its planned constellation, but it has already had a close call.</p><p>In September 2019, the European Space Agency had to maneuver one of its spacecraft at the last minute to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-didnt-move-starlink-satellite-after-crash-warning-due-to-bug-2019-9">avoid possibly colliding with a Starlink satellite</a>. The chance of that crash was 1 in 1,000. While that may sound low, NASA routinely moves the ISS for chances of 1 in 100,000.</p><p>The ESA said it had to move its satellite because SpaceX had "no plan to take action." SpaceX said it missed the ESA emails about the issue due to a "bug" in its communications systems.</p><div type="image" title="spacex starlink internet satellite spacecraft solar panels arrays earth orbit illustration 00002" height="1080" width="1440" msid="78702218" hostid="261"></div><p>Overall, close approaches like that seem to be happening more frequently.</p><p>"We are seeing recently a decided uptick in the number of conjunctions," Dan Oltrogge, an astrodynamicist at Analytical Graphics, Inc, where he uses a software that has been assessing conjunction data since 2005, told Business Insider. "And it looks to be very well aligned with the new large-constellation spacecraft that have been launched."</p><p>As new <keyword id="518734" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="satellite-constellations">satellite constellations</keyword> launch, regulatory agencies like the FCC may need to evaluate how many dead spacecraft they're willing to accept.</p><p>"What is an acceptable failure rate?" McDowell said. "That, I'm maybe not competent to have an opinion on."</p><p><em>This story has been updated with new information. It was originally published on October 16, 2020.</em></p>

About 1 in 40 of SpaceX's Starlink satellites may have failed. That's not too bad, but across a 42,000-spacecraft constellation it could spark a crisis.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A dead <keyword id="78455" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="soviet">Soviet</keyword> satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket body seem to have avoided a <keyword id="6375389" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="collision">collision</keyword> on Thursday night, after satellite-tracking company LeoLabs calculated a 10% chance they would crash.</li><li>It was impossible to intervene to prevent a collision, since both objects are dead and can't be maneuvered.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-air-force-satellites-might-crash-in-space-over-pittsburgh-2020-1">Satellite collisions</a> can produce huge clouds of dangerous, high-speed <keyword id="943402" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Space-Debris">space debris</keyword>, which can threaten other spacecraft.</li><li>Close approaches like this are becoming more common as companies like <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-enough-satellites-to-launch-public-beta-2020-10">SpaceX</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-spent-500-million-on-bankrupt-satellite-operator-despite-warnings-2020-7">OneWeb</a> launch fleets of internet <keyword id="41530" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="satellites">satellites</keyword>.</li></ul><p>A dead Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket body sped toward each other in space this week, but avoided a catastrophic crash on Thursday night.</p><p>LeoLabs, a company that uses radar to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/radar-tracks-space-junk-prevent-collisions-2019-10">track satellites and debris</a> in space, <a href="https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1316147305125490694">said</a> on Tuesday that it was monitoring a "very high-risk" conjunction — an intersection in the two objects' orbits around Earth. The company has used its radar arrays to observe each of the two objects as they pass overhead three or four times per day since Friday.</p><p>The data suggest that the two large pieces of space junk missed each other by <a href="https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1316410784075972609">8 to 43 meters</a> (26 to 141 feet) at 8:56 p.m. ET on Thursday.</p><div type="image" title="satellite conjunction collision probability leolabs october 2020 rocket" height="345" width="600" msid="78671328" hostid="261"></div><p>On Wednesday, when the estimated miss distance was just 12 meters (19 feet), LeoLabs calculated a 10% chance that the objects would collide. That may seem low, but NASA routinely moves the International Space Station when the orbiting laboratory faces just a 0.001% (1-in-100,000) chance or greater of colliding with an object.</p><p>Since the Soviet satellite and Chinese rocket body are both defunct, nobody could move them out of each other's way. If they did collide, an explosion roughly equivalent to detonating 14 metric tons of TNT would have sent bits of debris rocketing in all directions, according to astronomer <a href="https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1316792122616545288">Jonathan McDowell</a>.</p><p>But when the rocket body passed over a LeoLabs radar just 10 minutes after the conjunction, there was only one object there — "no signs of debris," the company <a href="https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1316919600160903168">tweeted</a>.</p><div type="image" title="satellite debris collision experiment simulation explosion" height="1" width="1" msid="78671330" hostid="261"></div><p>"Bullet dodged," McDowell <a href="https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1316920458302918657">said</a> on Twitter. "But space debris is still a big problem."</p><p>A collision would probably not have posed a danger to anybody on Earth, since the satellites are 991 kilometers (616 miles) above the ground and crossed paths above Antarctica's Weddell Sea. But the resulting cloud of thousands of spaceship fragments would have been a hazard in Earth's orbit.</p><div type="image" title="october satellite rocket body conjunction antarctica" height="456" width="1047" msid="78671332" hostid="261"></div><p>Experts at The Aerospace Corporation had calculated much lower odds of collision: just 1 in 23 billion as of Thursday morning, with the objects projected to miss each other by about 70 meters (230 feet).</p><p>"The space-debris community is constantly warning about all these close approaches, and we're not wrong or lying about this," Ted Muelhaupt, who oversees The Aerospace Corporation's space-debris analysis, told Business Insider. "Any given one of them is a low-probability event, because space is still really big. But when you take these objects and you mix them up, sooner or later you're going to see a payoff. By most of our models we're overdue for another major collision."</p><h2>Space collisions make clouds of dangerous high-speed debris</h2><p><a href="http://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers">Nearly 130 million</a> bits of space junk currently surround Earth, from abandoned satellites, spacecraft that broke apart, and other missions. That debris travels at roughly 10 times the speed of a bullet, which is fast enough to inflict disastrous damage to vital equipment, no matter how small the pieces.</p><p>Such a hit could kill astronauts on a spacecraft.</p><div type="image" title="space shuttle endeavour wing debris junk hit hole damage nasa" height="672" width="900" msid="78671333" hostid="261"></div><p>Collisions between pieces of space junk make the problem worse since they fragment objects into smaller pieces.</p><p>"Each time there's a big collision, it's a big change in the LEO [low-Earth orbit] environment," Dan Ceperley, the CEO of LeoLabs, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/radar-tracks-space-junk-prevent-collisions-2019-10">previously told Business Insider</a>.</p><p>Two events in 2007 and 2009 increased the amount of large debris in low-Earth orbit <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/library/find/bibliographies/space_debris">by about 70%</a>.</p><p>The first was a Chinese test of an anti-satellite missile, in which <keyword id="1334" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="China">China</keyword> blew up one of its own weather satellites. Then two years later, an American spacecraft accidentally collided with a Russian one. </p><p>"Because of that, now there's sort of a debris belt," Ceperley said.</p><p>India conducted its own anti-satellite missile test in 2019, and that explosion created an estimated <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-anti-satellite-missile-test-space-debris-cloud-2019-3">6,500 pieces of debris</a> larger than an eraser.</p><div type="image" title="india anti satellite missile asat test mission shakti space debris junk cloud field orbit simulation march 2019 analytical graphics inc 2" height="902" width="1202" msid="78671334" hostid="261"></div><p>The satellite that India blew up had a mass of less than one metric ton.</p><p>Combined, the Soviet satellite and the Chinese rocket body that just careened past each other have a mass of nearly three metric tons (2,800 kilograms). Given those large sizes, a collision could have created a significant cloud of dangerous debris.</p><h2>High-risk satellite conjunctions are becoming more common</h2><p>This isn't the first time LeoLabs has alerted the world to the possibility of a high-risk satellite conjunction. In January, the company calculated <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-air-force-satellites-might-crash-in-space-over-pittsburgh-2020-1">a possible collision between a dead space telescope and an old US Air Force satellite</a>.</p><p>The objects did not crash, but Ceperley said that because both satellites "were decommissioned, basically nobody was keeping a close eye on them." </p><p>The US Air Force, which tracks satellites for the government, did not notify NASA about that potential collision, the space agency told Business Insider at the time.</p><div type="image" title="satellite collision pittsburgh simulation" height="338" width="600" msid="78671335" hostid="261"></div><p>Experts' warnings about space junk have only grown more urgent since that near miss.</p><p>"We are seeing recently a decided uptick in the number of conjunctions," Dan Oltrogge, an astrodynamicist who researches orbital debris at Analytical Graphics, Inc, told Business Insider.</p><p>Oltrogge uses a software system that has been collecting and assessing conjunction data for the last 15 years. The recent uptick in orbital encounters, he added, "looks to be very well aligned with the new large-constellation spacecraft that have been launched."</p><p>The large constellations he's referring to are fleets of internet satellites that companies like SpaceX, Amazon, and OneWeb are planning to launch. In total, the companies plan to launch more than 100,000 satellites by the end of the decade. SpaceX has already rocketed nearly 800 new satellites into Earth's orbit since May 2019.</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oWB7ZySDHg8" frameborder="0"></iframe><h2>A debris disaster could cut off our access to space</h2><p>If the space-junk problem were to get extreme, a chain of collisions could spiral out of control and surround Earth in an impassable field of debris. This possibility is known as a Kessler event, after Donald J. Kessler, who worked for NASA's Johnson Space Center and calculated in a 1978 paper that it could take hundreds of years for such debris to clear up enough to make spaceflight safe again.</p><p>"It is a long-term effect that takes place over decades and centuries," Muelhaupt told Business Insider in January. "Anything that makes a lot of debris is going to increase that risk."</p><p>The sheer number of objects in Earth's orbit may already be having a Kessler-like effect — a risk that Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck described last week.</p><p>"This has a massive impact on the launch side," he told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/07/business/rocket-lab-debris-launch-traffic-scn/index.html">CNN Business</a>, adding that <keyword id="48020" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Rockets">rockets</keyword> "have to try and weave their way up in between these [satellite] constellations."</p>

A dead Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket body just avoided colliding in space and exploding into dangerous debris

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The core stage of a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-to-launch-first-space-station-module-tianhe-2021-4">Chinese rocket</a> is expected to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/huge-chinese-rocket-stage-to-fall-to-earth-uncontrolled-2021-5">plummet back to Earth</a> this weekend uncontrolled.</li><li>Experts expect about 5 to 9 metric tons of <keyword id="9428" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Rocket">rocket</keyword> parts to rain down somewhere on Earth.</li><li>The rocket stage is circling much of the inhabited world, but it will most likely land in the ocean.</li></ul><p>Sometime this weekend, somewhere on Earth, it's probably going to rain rocket parts.</p><p>That's because a 22.5-ton cylinder is hurtling around the planet uncontrolled, losing altitude with each lap. It's the body of <keyword id="1334" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="China">China</keyword>'s Long March 5B rocket, which <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-to-launch-first-space-station-module-tianhe-2021-4">launched the first module of the country's new space station</a> last week.</p><p>The rocket body is expected to fall to Earth sometime this weekend, most likely on Saturday. That's according to projections from the <a href="https://www.space-track.org/auth/login">US Space Force</a>, <a href="http://en.roscosmos.ru/22097/">Russia's space agency</a>, and <a href="https://aerospace.org/reentries/cz-5b-rocket-body-id-48275">the Aerospace Corporation</a>, a nonprofit research firm that receives US funding.</p><p>At this point, it is impossible to accurately estimate where the rocket stage will fall. Projections show it entering the atmosphere in a roughly 20-hour window. During that period, the rocket stage will circle Earth several times.</p><p>The spacecraft's orbit takes it over a vast swath of the planet - from Los Angeles to New York to southern Europe to Beijing, down through most of Australia, Africa, and South America. Mostly, though, it will fly over oceans and uninhabited land.</p><p>"Its trajectory covers much of the populated world. So if you can't control where it reenters [the atmosphere], then there's a real danger it will reenter someplace with people underneath it," John Logsdon, the founder of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council, told Insider.</p><div type="image" title="aerospace corporation chart of long march 5b rocket stage reentry" height="866" width="1730" msid="82469652" hostid="261"></div><p>As the rocket stage falls through Earth's atmosphere, friction will heat the surrounding air to roughly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The rocket will likely fall apart in this heat, and parts of it may burn up, but other pieces may survive.</p><p>Experts estimate that more than 5 metric tons - 11,000 pounds - of rocket parts will rain down somewhere on Earth. That might include fuel tanks, thrusters, large parts of the rocket's engines, and bits of metal and insulation.</p><p>Most likely, all that debris will land in the ocean.</p><p>"The risk that there will be some damage or that it would hit someone is pretty small - not negligible, it could happen - but the risk that it will hit you is incredibly tiny. And so I would not lose one second of sleep over this on a personal-threat basis," Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who tracks objects orbiting Earth, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/04/politics/chinese-rocket-earth-scn/index.html">told CNN</a>.</p><p>Still, this is an "unusual situation," Logsdon said, and China might have some explaining to do.</p><h2>'China owes the international community an explanation'</h2><div type="image" title="GettyImages 1313957056" height="1666" width="2222" msid="82469653" hostid="261"></div><p>Normally, after a launch, rockets push themselves into the atmosphere and fall back to Earth over remote ocean areas like the South Pacific - a process called "controlled reentry."</p><p>China's older rockets follow this practice. But two days after the Long March 5B launched, observers on Earth realized that its upper stage was circling the planet and slowly losing altitude. Unlike most modern rocket stages, it had fallen into an unstable orbit. Experts aren't sure whether this was an accident or simply how the rocket was designed. Chinese authorities have not offered an explanation.</p><p>"Rockets get launched all the time, and very seldom is there concern about reentry," Logsdon said. "So yeah, I'm a little confused as to why this is happening. Is it just willful disregard of the international guidelines? Or because it's a new vehicle it wasn't properly designed so it could do a controlled reentry? Whatever. It's unfortunate that it puts a lot of people at risk."</p><p>This rocket has launched once before, with the same outcome. China first launched the Long March 5B in May 2020, in a test that put a spaceship prototype into orbit. That rocket's core stage also fell to Earth uncontrolled six days after launch. It reentered Earth's atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean, according to the US Space Force's 18th Space Control Squadron. Some local reports indicated that bits of the rocket <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21256484/china-rocket-debris-africa-uncontrolled-reentry-long-march-5b">fell in Côte d'Ivoire</a>.</p><p>Experts can only estimate how much of the rocket body will slam into the Earth. A rule of thumb is that 20% to 40% of a large object's mass will survive its fall through the atmosphere. In this case, that means 5 to 9 metric tons would reach the ground.</p><p>"This stage and its predecessor last May are the sixth- and seventh-largest objects to ever reenter," Ted Muelhaupt, who oversees the Aerospace Corporation's space-debris analysis, told Insider.</p><p>"The probability that a piece of <keyword id="943402" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Space-Debris">space debris</keyword> will land on a city or a densely populated area is usually relatively small," he added. "But note that this reentry will occur between 41.5 degrees north and 41.5 degrees south latitudes, where the vast bulk of the world's population lives."</p><div type="image" title="spacex starship explosion debris" height="1247" width="1663" msid="82469654" hostid="261"></div><p>If any rocket parts land on people or their property, China could be on the hook for the damage. Under the 1972 Space Liability Convention treaty, the launching nation is liable for its rockets and any damage they cause.</p><p>"I hesitate to use the word irresponsible," Logsdon said. "I would like a clearer understanding from the Chinese side of why this is happening."</p><p>But he added, "I think at a minimum, China owes the international community an explanation."</p><h2>China plans to launch 2 more of these rockets to build its space station</h2><div type="image" title="Long March 5B China Tianhe space station" height="1250" width="1666" msid="82469656" hostid="261"></div><p>China's plans to build its space station involve 11 launches by the end of 2022, two of which would use Long March 5B rockets. The vehicle is designed to put space-station modules into orbit, according to <a href="https://spacenews.com/huge-rocket-looks-set-for-uncontrolled-reentry-following-chinese-space-station-launch/">Andrew Jones</a>, a journalist covering Chinese space programs.</p><p>It's not clear how China's space agencies will dispose of the next two Long March 5B rocket bodies. Designing a rocket stage so that it makes a controlled reentry after launch can be more expensive, according to Muelhaupt - it may require significantly altering the design or even cutting how much cargo the rocket can carry.</p><p>"Nevertheless, this is a best practice and is rapidly becoming a global norm," he said.</p><p>Logsdon is hopeful that international pressure could influence China's launch plans.</p><p>"One would hope that if indeed there is, as predicted, pieces that survive reentry, that there would be changes made in the Long March 5B for the next two launches," he said. "We'll see."</p>

Somewhere on Earth, it could rain rocket parts this weekend as a runaway Chinese spacecraft breaks up in the atmosphere

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5aba70b57f0a8301098b46f3-2000/satellite-crash-collision-space-junk-debris-illustration-shutterstock276319031.jpg" border="0" alt="satellite crash collision space junk debris illustration shutterstock_276319031" data-mce-source="Shutterstock" data-mce-caption="An illustration of a runaway space junk event called the Kessler syndrome." data-link="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/toxic-garbage-space-over-earth-276319031" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/toxic-garbage-space-over-earth-276319031">Shutterstock</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of a runaway space junk disaster.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Tens of thousands of objects have rocketed into space since the start of the Space Race.</strong></li><li><strong>Most objects are hunks of space junk moving at speeds of roughly 17,500 mph.</strong></li><li><strong>The US government maintains an online catalog of which countries are responsible for the objects in orbit around Earth, and what they are.</strong></li><li><strong>Russia, the United States, and China have created and deorbited the most space debris.</strong></li></ul><hr /><p><br />China's first space station, called Tiangong-1 or "Heavenly Palace," will fall to its fiery doom on or <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/when-chinese-tiangong-1-space-station-will-crash-2018-1">around April 1</a>.</p><p>But the 9.4-ton spacecraft is just one of thousands of large human-made objects zipping around Earth at roughly 17,500 mph, or about 10 times as fast as a speeding bullet.</p><p>This is not good.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5abc09235c0d630c028b4a15-896/space-shuttle-endeavour-wing-debris-junk-hit-hole-damage-nasa.jpg" border="0" alt="space shuttle endeavour wing debris junk hit hole damage nasa" data-mce-source="NASA" data-mce-caption="A space-debris hit to space shuttle Endeavour's radiator found after one of its missions. The entry hole is about 0.25 inches wide, and the exit hole is twice as large." data-link="https://earthdata.nasa.gov/user-resources/sensing-our-planet/rubble-trouble" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://earthdata.nasa.gov/user-resources/sensing-our-planet/rubble-trouble">NASA</a></span></p><p class="caption">A space-debris hit to space shuttle Endeavour's radiator found after one of its missions. The entry hole is about 0.25 inches wide, and the exit hole is twice as large.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The more objects there are in orbit - especially large, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-space-station-crash-date-location-estimate-2018-3">uncontrolled space stations</a>, used rocket parts, and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-powered-satellites-space-2016-3">dead satellites</a> - the greater the chances are for a catastrophic chain-reaction of collisions and debris creation, called <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/space-junk-kessler-syndrome-chain-reaction-prevention-2018-3">a Kessler syndrome event</a>. Such a disaster could shut off large swaths of space to astronauts and new satellites for generations.</p><p>"This debris can stay up there for hundreds of years," Bill Ailor, an aerospace engineer and atmospheric reentry specialist who works for the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation, previously told Business Insider, adding that objects in higher orbits (e.g. geostationary satellites) can circle Earth for thousands of years.</p><p>Luckily, the Space Surveillance Network (SSN) keeps an eye out for satellites and space debris using ground-based radar stations and optical telescopes, plus some observatories in space.</p><p>Right now, it's tracking about 23,000 objects larger than a softball above Earth, and roughly 14,000 of these are uncontrolled - and at risk of creating more debris.</p><h2>Which countries launch the most stuff into space</h2><p>Most objects are in low-Earth orbit, roughly 25o miles above the planet. Fewer satellites are launched to geostationary orbits, or about 22,300 miles high.</p><p>But what goes up usually comes down in space. Earth's outermost atmosphere drags and slows down objects over time, causing them to fall, burn up, and, in some cases, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/spacecraft-cemetery-point-nemo-google-maps-2017-10">crash into the ocean</a> or land.</p><p>Publicly available orbital-tracking data from SSN is fed into the website <a href="https://www.space-track.org/#/boxscore" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Space-Track.org</a> (registration required), which is contracted by the US Strategic Command.</p><p>Here are the top 10 countries and organizations with the most objects in space and what they are, based on data downloaded on March 28, 2018:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5abc0b198c4396721a8b4954-2400/space-junk-debris-satellites-numbers-by-country-active-march-2018-bi-graphics.png" border="0" alt="space junk debris satellites numbers by country active march 2018 bi graphics" data-mce-source="Samantha Lee/Business Insider" /><p class="source"><span>Samantha Lee/Business Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Russia has the most stuff in space, with 6,512 objects in orbit. The US is second with 6,262 objects.</p><p>Considering that rocket bodies are a type of large space debris, Russia is arguably the messiest in space, with 4,994 uncontrolled objects. The US is a close second with 4,684 uncontrolled objects.</p><p>China has only recently <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-space-program-cnsa-photos-2015-11">ramped up its space program</a>, yet it's in a close third with 3,601 hunks of space junk; this is because the nation destroyed one of its own satellites in a 2007 <a href="http://www.centerforspace.com/asat/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">anti-satellite weapons test</a>.</p><p>Satellite consortiums like Intelsat, SES, and Globalstar make the top 10, though they are relatively small space-junk contributors, since most of their objects are active satellites.</p><p>Space-Track.org also shows which countries have had the most stuff fall from space:</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5abc0b2c28bfdd1a008b4a92-2400/space-junk-debris-satellites-numbers-by-country-deorbited-march-2018-bi-graphics.png" border="0" alt="space junk debris satellites numbers by country deorbited march 2018 bi graphics" data-mce-source="Samantha Lee/Business Insider" /><p class="source"><span>Samantha Lee/Business Insider</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Russia is a clear historical winner, with 21,661 objects that have crashed to Earth. The US has deorbited about 12,453 about half as much deorbited stuff.</p><p>China, which is a relative newcomer to space that launched its first satellite in 1970, has lost about 5,213 objects to a fiery doom.</p><p>Everything Space-Track.org lists is just a small fraction of the total number of objects.</p><p>According to the European Space Agency, there may be 670,000 bits of debris larger than a fingernail up there and perhaps <a href="http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Clean_Space/How_many_space_debris_objects_are_currently_in_orbit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">170 million pieces of debris</a> larger than 1 millimeter - objects like flecks of paint and fragments of explosive bolts used on rockets.</p><h2>How to clean up outer space</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5ab99809e308411d008b4628-1280/tiangong-1-chinese-space-station-atmospheric-reentry-illustration-aerospace-corporation-youtube.jpg" border="0" alt="tiangong 1 chinese space station atmospheric reentry illustration aerospace corporation youtube" data-mce-source="Aerospace Corporation/YouTube" data-mce-caption="An illustration of China's large modular space station, Tiangong-1, burning up in Earth's atmosphere." data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0GBlCJCkr0" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0GBlCJCkr0">Aerospace Corporation/YouTube</a></span></p><p class="caption">An illustration of China's large modular space station, Tiangong-1, burning up in Earth's atmosphere.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Getting old spacecraft out of orbit is key to preventing the formation of space junk, and many space agencies and corporations now build spacecraft <a href="http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2017/04/Space_debris_2017_-_a_journey_to_Earth" target="_blank" rel="noopener">with systems to de-orbit them</a>.</p><p>But Ailor and others are eager to push the development of new technologies and methods that can lasso, bag, tug, and otherwise remove the old, uncontrolled stuff that's already up there and continues to pose a threat.</p><p>"I've proposed something like a XPRIZE or a Grand Challenge, where would you identify three spacecraft and give a prize to an entity to remove those things," he said.</p><p>The biggest hurdle in defeating space debris, however, is likely human.</p><p>"It's not just a technical issue. This idea of ownership gets to be a real player here," Ailor said. "No other nation has permission to touch a US satellite, for instance. And if we went after a satellite ... it could even be deemed an act of war."</p><p>Ailor said someone needs to get nations together to agree on a treaty that spells out laws-of-the-sea-like salvage rights to dead or uncontrollable objects in space.</p><p>"There needs to be something where nations and commercial authorities have some authority to go after something," he said.</p><figure id="img-540538" contenteditable="false" data-type="img" data-e2e-name="image-figure-image" data-media-container="image"></figure>     <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/spacecraft-cemetery-pacific-ocean-dead-satellites-2017-10">There's a place at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean where hundreds of giant spacecraft go to die</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/lapl6PJc-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

More than 14,000 hunks of dangerous space junk are hurtling around Earth - here's who put it all up there

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5ab950e462cf0f33018b4b53-1778/space-junk-debris-trash-orbiting-earth-kessler-syndrome-effect-event-shutterstock233084350.jpg" border="0" alt="space junk debris trash orbiting earth kessler syndrome effect event shutterstock_233084350" data-mce-source="Shutterstock" data-mce-caption="A thick ring of space junk orbits Earth in this fanciful artist's concept of a &amp;quotKessler syndrome&quot; event." data-link="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/space-junk-orbiting-around-earth-conceptual-233084350" /></div></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/india" target="_blank" rel="noopener">India</a> launched a missile into space on Wednesday morning that intentionally destroyed one of its own satellites.</li><li>The anti-satellite missile test, known as "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-in-india-just-shot-down-a-low-orbit-satellite-in-space-2019-3">Mission Shakti</a>," created a field of debris about 185 miles above Earth.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/anti-satellite-warfare" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Anti-satellite weaponry</a> raise the risk of creating a large and lasting catastrophe in space called a "<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/kessler-syndrome" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kessler syndrome</a>" event.</li><li>A Kessler syndrome describes a runaway cascade of space debris that'd complicate and curtail human access to and use of space for centuries.</li></ul><p>Early this morning, India launched a missile toward space, struck an Earth-orbiting satellite, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-in-india-just-shot-down-a-low-orbit-satellite-in-space-2019-3">destroyed the spacecraft</a>.</p><p>Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a televised address shortly after the launch to declare the anti-satellite or ASAT test a success. He praised the maneuver, called "Mission Shakti," as "an unprecedented achievement" that registers India as "a space power." Modi also clarified that the satellite was one of India's own, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-satellite/india-shoots-down-own-satellite-pm-hails-indias-arrival-as-space-power-idUSKCN1R80IA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reuters</a>. </p><p>"Our scientists shot down a live satellite. They achieved it in just three minutes," he said during the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRZ9A3wQBfw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">broadcast</a>, adding: "Until now, only US, Russia, and China could claim the title. India is the fourth country to achieve this feat."</p><p>While Modi and his supporters may hail the event as an epic achievement, India's ASAT test represents an escalation toward space warfare and also heightens the risk that humanity could lose access to crucial regions of the space around Earth.</p><p>That's because destroying the satellite created debris that's now floating in space. Those pieces have the potential to collide with, damage, and possibly destroy other spacecraft.</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>:<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-junk-kessler-syndrome-chain-reaction-prevention-2018-3"> A space junk disaster could cut off human access to space. Here's how.</a></em></p><p>The threat that debris poses isn't limited to expensive satellites. Right now, six crew members are living on board the International Space Station roughly 250 miles above Earth. That's about 65 miles higher than the 185-mile altitude of India's now-obliterated satellite, but there is nonetheless a chance some debris could reach higher orbits and threaten the space station.</p><p>Two astronauts are scheduled to conduct a spacewalk on Friday (it was going to be the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-female-astronauts-spacewalk-space-station-mcclain-koch-2019-3">first all-female spacewalk</a>, but that's no longer the case) to make upgrades to the orbiting laboratory's batteries. Spokespeople at NASA did not immediately respond to Business Insider's requests for information about the risk posed by this new debris field.</p><p>Regardless of what happens next, tracking the debris is essential.</p><p>"The Department of Defense is aware of the Indian ASAT launch," a spokesperson for the US Air Force's 18th Space Control Squadron, which tracks and catalogs objects in space, told Business Insider in an email. "US Strategic Command's Joint Force Space Component Command is actively tracking and monitoring the situation."</p><p>But a potential risk to the ISS or other spacecraft only scratches the surface of larger worries associated with destroying space satellites, either intentionally or accidentally.</p><h2>Space debris begets more space debris</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5ab9ae0f9096bc0e088b45b4-900/space-shuttle-endeavour-wing-debris-junk-hit-hole-damage-nasa.jpg" border="0" alt="space shuttle endeavour wing debris junk hit hole damage nasa" data-mce-source="NASA" data-mce-caption="A space-debris hit to space shuttle Endeavour's radiator found after one of its missions. The entry hole is about 0.25 inches wide, and the exit hole is twice as large." data-link="https://earthdata.nasa.gov/user-resources/sensing-our-planet/rubble-trouble" /></div></div></div></p><p>Any collision in space creates a cloud of debris, with each piece moving at about 17,500 mph. That's roughly the speed required to keep a satellite <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/earth-moon-distance-edge-of-outer-space-2018-5">in low-Earth orbit</a>, and more than 10 times as fast as a bullet shot from a gun.</p><p>At such velocities, even a stray paint chip can disable a satellite. Jack Bacon, a scientist at NASA, <a href="https://www.wired.com/2010/05/ff_space_junk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Wired</a> in 2010 that a strike by a softball-size sphere of aluminum would be akin to detonating 7 kilograms of TNT explosives.</p><p>This is worrisome for a global society increasingly reliant on space-based infrastructure to make calls, get online, find the most efficient route home via GPS, and more.</p><p>The ultimate fear is a space-access nightmare that Donald J. Kessler first described in 1978 while he was a NASA astrophysicist. In such a situation, one collision in space would create a cloud of debris that leads to other collisions, which in turn would generate even more debris, leading to a runaway effect.</p><p>So much high-speed space junk could surround Earth, Kessler calculated, that it might make it too risky for anyone to attempt launching spacecraft until most of the garbage slowed down in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/earth-atmosphere-extends-beyond-moon-hydrogen-gas-cloud-2019-2">the outer fringes of our planet's atmosphere</a>, fell toward the ground, and burned up.</p><p>"The orbital-debris problem is a classic tragedy of the commons problem, but on a global scale," Kessler said in a <a href="https://youtu.be/xgGm5odlIh4">2012 video documentary</a>. </p><p>Given the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-debris-garbage-statistics-country-list-2017-10">thousands of satellites in space</a> today, a collision cascade could play out over hundreds of years and get increasingly worse over time, perhaps indefinitely, unless technologies are developed to vaporize or deorbit space junk.</p><h2>A launch in the wrong direction</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c9bbbe68e436a11910a9fc1-1103/china-anti-satellite-asat-missile-kinetic-kill-vehicle-test-2007-space-debris-junk-cssi.jpg" border="0" alt="china anti satellite asat missile kinetic kill vehicle test 2007 space debris junk cssi" data-mce-source="CSSI" data-mce-caption="An illustration of the space debris cloud created by China's 2007 anti-satellite test." data-link="http://www.centerforspace.com/asat/" /></div></div></div></p><p>An ASAT test that China conducted in January 2007 showed how much of a headache the debris from these shoot-downs can become.</p><p>After a Chinese missile armed with a "kinetic kill vehicle" (essentially a giant bullet-like slug) smashed a 1,650-pound weather satellite, the collision created a cloud of more than 2,300 trackable chunks of debris the size of golf balls or larger. It also left behind 35,000 pieces larger than a fingernail, and perhaps 150,000 bits smaller than that, according to the <a href="http://www.centerforspace.com/asat/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Center for Space Standards and Innovation</a> (CSSI) and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17497766" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the BBC</a>.</p><p>The CSSI <a href="http://www.centerforspace.com/asat/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called the test</a> "the largest debris-generating event in history, far surpassing the previous record set in 1996."</p><p>Years later, satellite operators and NASA are still dodging the fallout with their spacecraft.</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-junk-collision-statistics-government-tracking-2017-2018-4">The US government logged 308,984 potential space-junk collisions in 2017 - and the problem could get much worse</a></em></p><p>Even without missiles, plenty of space debris is created regularly. Each launch of a rocket deposits some debris up there, and older satellites that have no de-orbiting system or aren't "parked" in a safe orbit can collide with other satellites.</p><p>Such a crash happened on February 10, 2009: A deactivated Russian communications satellite slammed into a US communications satellite at a combined speed of about 26,000 mph. The collision created thousands of pieces of new debris, many of which are still in orbit.</p><h2>There are more productive ways to use rockets</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5aba70b57f0a8301098b46f3-2000/satellite-crash-collision-space-junk-debris-illustration-shutterstock276319031.jpg" border="0" alt="satellite crash collision space junk debris illustration shutterstock_276319031" data-mce-source="Shutterstock" data-mce-caption="An illustration of a runaway space junk event called the Kessler syndrome." data-link="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/toxic-garbage-space-over-earth-276319031" /></div></div></div></p><p>To be clear, India's "Mission Shakti" test likely was not as dangerous as these other debris-creating events.</p><p>At an altitude of about 185 miles, it was roughly 350 miles closer to Earth than China's 2007 test or the US-Russian satellite crash of 2009. That means the pieces will fall out of orbit at a faster rate. However, the satellite India destroyed was not small - it likely weighed about 1,540 lbs, according to <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/india-shoots-down-a-weather-satellite-declares-itself-a-space-power/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ars Technica</a>.</p><p>Modi did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on the ASAT test's debris field, but according to Reuters, India "ensured there was no debris in space and the remnants would 'decay and fall back on to the earth within weeks.'" In that sense, the test may be more similar to a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180810124328/https://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/20/satellite.shootdown/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">US Navy shoot-down of a satellite in 2008</a>.</p><p>However, the forces involved a space-based crash can accelerate debris into higher and different orbits. So obliterating any satellite is not a step in the right direction. Nor is creating a capability that could one day, either intentionally or accidentally, spark a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-junk-kessler-syndrome-chain-reaction-prevention-2018-3">"Kessler syndrome"</a> event.</p><p>Much like the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-arms-deal-terminology-definitions-2018-7">idea of deterrence with nuclear weapons</a> - "if you attack me, I'll attack you with more devastating force" - deterrence with anti-satellite weapons is extremely risky. With either, miscalculation could lead to devastating and lasting problems that affect the entire world.</p><p><em><strong>Read more</strong>: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-pakistan-kashmir-nuclear-weapons-climate-cooling-2019-2">If India and Pakistan have a 'limited' nuclear war, scientists say it could wreck Earth's climate and trigger global famine</a></em></p><p>As a global society, it'd behoove us not to cheer the achievement of a weapons capability that edges the world closer to a frightening brink. Instead, we should rebuke such tests and instead demand from our leaders peaceful cooperation in space, including the development of means to control our <a href="https://www.iadc-online.org/Documents/IADC-2012-08,%20Rev%201,%20Stability%20of%20Future%20LEO%20Environment.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">already spiraling space-debris problem</a>.</p><p>Rather than individual countries investing in missile-based weaponry, perhaps we could spend that human and financial capital on some of the world's most <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/paris-climate-change-limits-100-years-2017-6">dire and pressing problems</a> - or even work toward <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/moon-missions-why-astronauts-have-not-returned-2018-7">returning people to the moon</a> and rocketing the first crews <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-colonization-human-survival-radiation-food-biosphere-2018-4">to Mars</a>.</p><p><em>Sriram Iyer and Ruqayyah Moynihan contributed reporting and translation assistance.</em></p><p class="tagline">This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.</p>

You Searched For "spacedebris" and got 11 results

ESA satellite Sentinel-1A dodges a 'high-risk collision' from Russian space debris

IANS

Mystery wreckage in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines is probably fallen Chinese rocket parts, space-debris experts say

Paola Rosa-Aquino,Morgan McFall-Johnsen

A secret Russian satellite has broken apart in orbit, creating a cloud of debris that could last a century

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Photos suggest SpaceX, NASA, and China space junk struck land. There's a 10% chance a person will be hit this decade.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen,Paola Rosa-Aquino

Japan is developing wooden satellites to send into orbit by 2023 in an effort to cut down on space junk

Isobel Asher Hamilton

A Chinese satellite seems to have collided with a piece of a Russian rocket in March - the first big space crash in a decade

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

About 1 in 40 of SpaceX's Starlink satellites may have failed. That's not too bad, but across a 42,000-spacecraft constellation it could spark a crisis.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

A dead Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket body just avoided colliding in space and exploding into dangerous debris

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

Somewhere on Earth, it could rain rocket parts this weekend as a runaway Chinese spacecraft breaks up in the atmosphere

Morgan McFall-Johnsen

More than 14,000 hunks of dangerous space junk are hurtling around Earth - here's who put it all up there

Dave Mosher,Samantha Lee

India's anti-satellite missile test just moved humanity closer to a space-junk nightmare scenario

Dave Mosher