

Space Junk Problem Is More Threatening Than Ever, Report Warns - sasvari
http://www.space.com/12801-space-junk-threat-orbital-debris-report.html

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seanos
It's not mentioned in the linked article but a significant proportion of the
space junk in orbit can be traced to China using a missile to destroy a
satellite back in 2007.

[http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2007/01/china_blows_u...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2007/01/china_blows_up_/)

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mturmon
Here's another link to that event, that also discusses a collision between two
satellites:

<http://www.space.com/8334-junk-space.html>

The claim is that the China missile test and this collision are responsible
for 60% of the number of objects in orbit.

Even though space is vast, the number of useful orbits is limited. For
example, the A-train
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-train_(satellite_constellatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-train_\(satellite_constellation\))
) is a parade of remote sensing satellites in sun-synchronous orbits (as they
look down, it is always within a few minutes of noon). So this makes
inadvertent collisions more likely.

Slightly related, here's a close asteroid passby that happened last summer:

<http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news172.html>

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mattw
Slight nitpick - the article said that the collision and missile test
_increased_ the amount of debris by 60%, not that they were responsible for
60% of debris in orbit. Still a lot, but not more than half.

~~~
mturmon
I said "claims" because, for reasons too tedious to list, I don't think they
do know or can know a very exact percentage (even to +/- 10%).

And note, they're talking about "number of items" (not "amount of debris" as
you say -- that would imply mass, a different thing).

But if it's anywhere near half of the "number of items", then these two
crashes alone are a highly significant source of junk. I did not know that,
and that seemed worth a link.

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sosuke
It's only slightly related and not a likely solution since finding space
debris is an issue but there was an Anime I recently watched called Planetes
that followed a team of space debris collectors that I would recommend.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes>

Collecting space debris became a large issue in the story because of civilian
space travel expanding and collisions that lead to catastrophe. They bring up
the Kessler syndrome more than once as well
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome> which describes a moment at
which there would be too much debris in space to launch anything else for a
long time.

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bobds
I've watched a couple episodes of that, was quite entertaining. I remember the
Greek title on a Japanese series caught my eye.

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jonathlee
The bigger problem by far is the treaty the _prohibits_ companies from one
nation from even touching the space junk of another nation. I know that there
are several different schemes/ideas floating around (space tethers for one)
trying to get funding to de-orbit or salvage space junk but they always get
hung up on the political problem. This is definitely _not_ a technical issue.

~~~
16BitTons
>This is definitely _not_ a technical issue.

Are there any ideas with a TRL>napkin?

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j_baker
Next question: How do we take care of space junk? It seems like it would be a
very expensive problem to fix?

~~~
16BitTons
If you are realy interested, look into NASA's Orbital Debris program. They
have a must-read quarterly newsletter: <http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/>

~~~
lanstein
must-read space debris quarterly newsletter : scientists :: the Masters
telecast contains 56 minutes of golf action per hour : golfers

(I happen to be in the latter camp)

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dismalist
The long term solution is to cut NASA's budget more.

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ThaddeusQuay2
Andy Griffith, with a little help from Isaac Asimov, has already solved this
problem.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1>

