Space Junk: Coming Soon to a Planet Near You

At 3:54 pm local time yesterday, a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket launched from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base into Earth’s lower orbit. On this rocket were 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites, designed to provide internet access to remote locations across the globe.

Missed the launch? Don’t worry - there’s one tomorrow, taking off from Florida with a batch of Starlink 6-72 satellites in tow. And another, this time from Jeff Bezoz’s Amazon, blasting into orbit on April 9th, carrying the company’s newly-developed Kuiper internet satellites with it. In fact, this April alone, there will be 13 rocket launches by space agencies and private companies across the world, all looking to make their mark in space. That’s more than 3 a week. And this explosion of spacefaring activity is leading to scientists voicing their concerns - less about the missions themselves, but what they’re leaving behind.

Could we be running out of space - in space?

What’s the Big Deal about Space Debris

Space debris, or space junk as it’s better known, is a problem out of science fiction, coming to a planet near you. But what even is it, you might be wondering. They are non-operational, human-made objects over 1cm travelling in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO): in other words, the junk left over from space missions orbiting round our cosmic backgarden.

While this includes defunct satellites, rocket parts and collision collateral, most are as small as a paint chip. However, this doesn’t mean it’s harmless, according to Dr Olivia Drayson from the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research. When moving at 18,000 mph, which is 7x the speed of a bullet, these fragments “can cause a huge amount of damage, puncturing spacecraft or posing risks to astronauts on spacewalks.”

Though it might sound a bit far-fetched, this is a problem that is rapidly getting worse. We currently have 170 million pieces of space junk whizzing around the Earth at these incredible speeds, all ready to cause billions of dollars worth of damage to the satellites and space stations they pass by. Repairing such damage is now simply part of routine for astronauts on missions; and with the number of missions rising year on year, as private companies such as SpaceX and Amazon send more and more rockets into lower orbit, the amount of junk, and risk of damage, is going to increase exponentially.

This isn’t helped by something called Kessler’s Syndrone - which is essentially a chain reaction where collisions between pieces of junk create more junk, as objects shatter and more debris is produced. It’s such a concern that scientists like Drayson are worried the LEO will be completely unusable for space travel in the near future.

“Each collision creates debris, which then goes on to create more collisions, and could end up creating orbits that are completely unusable, just filled with nothing but debris. So realistically, we’re creating an environment where satellites will have a hard time going past a certain point, or they’ll need to really time it carefully.

And then we’re also creating a situation where there’s a sort of chaos effect of collisions causing more collisions, where you can’t predict how and when things are going to fall back into the Earth. Suddenly it’s not one or two pieces every day, it’s several pieces.”

Satellite Central

This cosmic waste isn’t just a problem in space - it’s going to affect life down here too, and more than you think. Our lives are made easier by the satellites up above our heads, connecting us to the internet, improving mapping systems, weather prediction, and even keeping global systems like banking and air travel running smoothly. But what if space is simply too full?

SpaceX currently have over 7000 satellites in our low orbit, providing connectivity across the globe. However, the $350 billion company’s ambitious plan to expand this into a “megaconstellation” of 42,000 satellites raises serious concerns about space congestion, and the growing threat of orbital debris.

Imagine trying to get home using Google Maps - but the GPS signal is down because of a satellite crash. Or your flight gets grounded because a weather satellite was knocked offline. Even something as routine as tapping your card could stop working. Space debris might seem distant. But in a world that runs on satellites, it’s anything but.

It’s not just urban dwellers that will be affected. Despite delivering internet connection to hundreds of millions of people, these megaconstellations disproportionately impacting Indigenous communities across the world, says Mi’kmaw interdisciplinary scientist Dr Hilding Neilson.

“Most indigenous people in North America live in more rural reserves, away from commercial centres. If junk comes down there, people are less likely to pay attention, or get necessary help. And because of all this debris and satellites, we are also having issues with light pollution. The whole night sky is getting brighter, changing how indigenous people are able to navigate and tell stories.”

Unidentified Falling Objects

It’s not just convenience that will take a hit - Earth itself stands in the firing line. The European Space Agency (ESA) released estimations that objects measuring 1-metre or larger reenter Earth’s atmosphere approximately once a week, while smaller tracked debris objects reenter on average twice daily.

The good news is that, during the final 110km of the debris’ journey, or “the last 10 minutes before an object reaches the ground, the atmosphere is dense enough that the object heats up owing to air resistance, and it decelerates, leading in the majority of cases to its complete destruction.”

And in the event of larger objects, such as heavy scientific satellites that are constructed from high-melting-point materials such as stainless steel or titanium, the rate of reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere decreases to about once a year. Even in these cases, as humans inhabit roughly 10% of the Earth’s surface, “the risk to any single individual is several orders of magnitude smaller than commonly accepted risks faced in daily life. Being struck by lightning, for example, is 60 000 times more likely.”

However, the odds seem to be changing: on New Year’s Eve 2023, rural Kenyans in Makueni county woke up to a 500kg metallic rocket ring crashing into their village. Although no one was injured, the rattled community of Mukuku village described a burning ring that was “glowing red-hot” for hours. Inquiries as to where exactly this defunct piece of rocket came from remain ongoing.

And this isn’t the only incident recorded. In July 2023, a mysterious cylindrical object washed up on a beach in Western Australia, baffling locals and sending the international press spinning. An investigation revealed it to be the remains of an Indian rocket booster.

While these may seem for now like freak accidents, physicist Professor Richard Ocaya thinks we should be treating these occurrences as warnings.

“ We may be crossing that red line of no return. It would be very sad to have a disaster happen, like space debris landing on a military installation, before we take it seriously. And unfortunately in my, in my view, it would be too late, because people would’ve lost their lives.”

Can We Clean Up the Cosmos?

For any atsro-chondriacs out there, some solutions are on the horizon, says Ocaya - though they remain in the early days of such development. “Deorbiting these objects in a controlled fashion will help. One thinks of robotic arms, nets or harpoons. Japan is experimenting with wooden satellites that are guaranteed to burn on reentry. One could even use lasers that could disintegrate these objects in space - but you would need extremely high powered lasers to do that.”

Yet these technologies, while exciting, are still in their nascent stages. More important, Ocaya argues, is international cooperation, accountability, and robust collision tracking to mitigate the growing risk of space debris. He emphasises that no single nation can manage this problem alone, and so collaboration across borders, involving space agencies, private companies, and regulatory bodies, is key to maintaining the long-term sustainability of space. However, this is easier said than done.

“It’s a problem that affects everyone, but unfortunately, when it comes to private companies and competitions between different countries, it becomes extremely difficult to regulate these things.  And many of these objects are militaristic nature, so the creators may not be too keen on disclosing location, functionalities and so on. Their best hope is that when these objects fail, they will burn out in the atmosphere.”

With thousands of new satellites expected to populate LEO in the coming years, the unchecked growth of space traffic and the subsequent accumulation of debris could quickly outpace efforts to mitigate it. While international policies, such as the 1972 Liability Convention, establish that countries are responsible for damages caused by their space objects, enforcement remains inconsistent.

In fact, the Convention has been formally invoked only once - in 1978, when debris from the Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 crashed in Canada, leading to a settlement of $3 million Canadian dollars. To put this in perspective, the rocket ring that crash landed in rural Kenya has never been officially linked with any state.

With such laissez-faire attitudes a norm in the industry, Ocaya warns that waiting for a shift in international policy and attitudes amounts to reclkessness.

“Space is a frontier, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t explore it, we should.  But we should do so very responsibly. We’ve seen, the effects of global warming and the climate. We don’t want to repeat mistakes like this. But the space debris problem is following the same patterns of human thinking.”

While the solutions exist, it will take swift and coordinated action to avert our nearest orbit becoming overcrowded cosmic chaos. As it stands, the message is clear: Houston, we have a problem.