[Itrtuawh]

Spacejunk in Earth's atmosphere revealed

By Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 11:01am BST 15/04/2008

It's more than 50 years since Russia signalled the start of the space race with the launch of Sputnik One.


Computer-generated image of trackable objects currently in orbit around the Earth

For more than two decades from 1957 the Soviet Union and the USA competed in a battle to be the first to the stars.

The race ended in 1969 when the US delivered the coup de grace by landing Neil Armstrong safely on the Moon.

Now space flights are commonplace and Sir Richard Branson will soon be taking the first tourists on sub-orbital flights on his craft SpaceShipTwo.

In 1964 the first TV satellite was launched into a geostationary orbit in order to transmit the Olympic games from Tokyo.

Since then hundreds of communication satellites have been launched and Earth's atmosphere still bears the scars.

A European Space Agency (ESA) computer-generated picture shows a view from space with the planet surrounded by a snowstorm of space debris.

Much of it is junk with telecommunications equipment that once cost millions now past its sell-by date yet still in orbit.

ESA says the number of objects in Earth's atmosphere has risen steadily increasing by 200 per year on average and that there are now 600 working satellites.

Collisions, explosions and lost or discarded material from space flights and rockets has resulted in the atmosphere resembling a junk yard with potentially millions of pieces of metal travelling in permanent orbit 20,000 miles above the Earth.


Copyright 2008 The Daily Telegraph.

[suidinguilelf]

Cool.

But when you consider how small these pieces are, and how LARGE this sphere is, you come to realize that it is not the JunkYard that Sci-Fi loves to portray in its images of the future.

It is hard for some of the geo-sync sweet spots over desired locations for telecommunications and military intelligence, but aside from that......

[bUqLfXRI]

Fascinating picture.

Its surpising how many satellites there are up there - a few months ago i was in the countryside (away from any light polluted areas), and was watching them pass over head - it was a clear night and there seemed to be quite a few of them.

I'd love to get the chance to ride on Richard Branson's 'SpaceShipTwo', though doubt i'd ever be able to afford it. I wonder how much it would cost.

[Nosmas]

I send all my junk into space.

Installed one of those mass-accelerators outside the window several years ago. Works well.

If you look closely at the picture just above the ring at the 5 o'clock position, you'll see my old TV.

[cmruloah]

Wouldn't that be great? What if we could launch all our garbage into space - into the sun even. Or simply create a ring like Saturn's around the Earth for our viewing pleasure.

[Acalsenunse]

U.S., China urged to work out space security regime

Thu Sep 18, 4:41 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China's demonstrated anti-satellite capability makes it critical for Washington to work with Beijing to avoid an arms race in space, a leading U.S. think tank said on Thursday.

The Council on Foreign Relations report, "China, Space Weapons, and U.S. Security," urges the next U.S. administration to update policy for "an era where space is a potentially far more contested domain than in the past, with few rules."

China's destruction of one of its defunct weather satellites in January 2007 showed the Chinese military's ability to attack satellites, the report said. The United States and former Soviet Union demonstrated that capability in the 1980s.

"The risks inherent in space conflict, where vital U.S. interests are at stake, suggest that preventing space conflict should be a major U.S. security objective," said the report by technology and security consultant Bruce MacDonald.

"The United States and China should both pursue diplomatic options to increase clarity and minimize misunderstanding on space-related matters, and reduce the chances of accidental conflict," it said.

MacDonald, senior director of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, recommends a mixture of military programs to increase defenses and diplomacy with China on the space issue.

"Both countries have interests in avoiding the actual use of counterspace weapons and shaping a more stable and secure space environment for themselves and other spacefaring nations," the report said.

MacDonald said China's military dependence on space remained low compared to the that of the United States, whose high reliance on space presents a vulnerability the Chinese People's Liberation Army could exploit if it chose to deploy offensive space capabilities.

"The PLA envisions the possibility of conflict in space and they're preparing for it," he said in Washington, adding that Chinese thinking on space warfare was not understood completely by outsiders.

China rejected criticism of its 2007 anti-satellite test and Beijing publicly says it opposes the weaponization of space and will not get involved in arms race in space.

(Reporting by Paul Eckert)

*****

Good space-lingo "counterspace weapons," "spacefaring nations," soon we'll be taking about spacetrade, spacepirates and spacesalvage. Beam me up matey!

And you think this is harrowing?

[PVaQlNaP]

Won't most pieces start falling into earth and burn in the atmosphere anyways?

[cymnPrayerm]

First satellite collision produces dangerous wreckage

Joe Byrne
Published: Wednesday February 11, 2009

Outer space is getting too crowded already.

A satellite crash that occurred on Tuesday was the first of its kind, NASA reported Wednesday. Two communications satellites, a privately owned US machine and a presumably defunct Russian Cosmos orbiter, collided over northern Siberia around noon ET. As more and more devices are put into orbit around Earth to replace first-generation space equipment, the likelihood of satellite crashes causing expensive damage is increasing rapidly. Scientists have been warning of the danger of crowded orbits for years, but the solutions are lacking.

The Space Surveillance Network, run by the US military, currently tracks 8,000 space objects in Earth's orbit. Of these 8,000, approximately 560 are operational satellites. The rest are rocket debris and non-operational satellites. The objects are regularly observed by the military in the Space Catalog.

But though the tracking of satellites is extensive, our ability to do anything about an imminent crash is limited by distance. Satellites passively orbiting the planet have little to stop them, and if the military can calculate a crash in the near future, the most that can be done is a warning.

The crash between the Iridium Corporation's satellite and the Cosmos orbiter resulted in 500 to 600 new pieces of debris going in every direction, crossing the orbits of other satellites. Nicholas Johnson of NASA reported to Reuters, "It takes a while for the debris to spread out and for us to get an accurate head count."

The only manned object constantly in orbit is the International Space Station, at an altitude of 218 miles above Earth. The speed at which a satellite travels means that debris is flung far and wide. Tuesday's collision occurred at 490 miles; Johnson told the New York Times today that he believes there are already objects from the collision that have passed through space station altitude. Though the risk to the station - which currently has 3 astronauts on board - is very small, the risk increases exponentially with every satellite collision that occurs. Each crash results in hundreds of new fragments with their own individual orbits. And though low-orbit communications satellites eventually burn up in Earth's atmosphere after they are no longer useful, high-orbit satellites remain as long as they aren't dismantled or obliterated.

For now, all we can do is keep watching.

[qQVXpYM6]

I see the future; we'll always have junkyards.

[Paybeskf]

And stupid me thought Orbital Debris was a band from Houston

[Deribasov]

All depends on how you pronounce Houston.


And Debris.

[BoboStin]

Satellite wreckage falls on Kentucky, Texas, New Mexico

Joe Byrne
Published: Sunday February 15, 2009

A collision of two satellites in space on Tuesday has been lighting up the sky and rattling the windows in certain regions of the U.S this weekend. On Friday night, residents in southeastern Kentucky were reporting "blue and white lights" in the sky and loud booms, presumed to be hypersonic shock waves as the debris enters the atmosphere. NOAA announced debris following in the Lexington area.

Today, the debris is falling over north Texas and New Mexico. A fireball burned out in the sky in between Dallas and Austin at around 11 am, according to the Dallas Morning News. Onlookers were alarmed by a "red and orange fireball with a small black center speeding toward Earth before burning out in a trail of lingering white smoke." So far, no injuries have resulted from any falling debris. Emergency officials believe the debris to be falling over a 500-mile region.

However, Alberta was put on high alert on Friday morning for a 'school bus sized' piece of debris which eventually fell into the Atlantic Ocean. It is still unclear if debris will continue to fall, and where.

A satellite crash that occurred on Tuesday was the first of its kind, NASA reported Wednesday. Two communications satellites, a privately owned US machine and a presumably defunct Russian Cosmos orbiter, collided over northern Siberia around noon ET. The crash resulted in 1,200 new pieces of debris going in every direction. Experts are concerned about the damage that the debris may cause to other satellites.

"There are quite a lot of satellites in nearby orbits," said Igor Lisov, a Russian space expert who spoke to AP on Thursday. "Fragments may trigger a chain of collisions," he added.

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a statement on Thursday explaining that this collision "significantly increased" the amount of debris in a critical altitude of space. Before this collision, there were 3000 objects orbiting at an altitude of around 500 miles. That number may have increased by almost 15% with one collision, which may become increasingly likely. Over a period of years, the debris cloud spreads out to form a "shell" around the Earth, and is at risk of collision with any satellite at that altitude. The report predicts that an active satellite will collide with a piece of space debris every three to four years.