As companies like SpaceX rush to get their tens of thousands of new satellites into space with record speed, some experts fear that in doing so, we may be making a terrible space debris problem much, much worse — garbage on an exponential scale. The European Space Agency says there are more than 129 million pieces of orbital garbage encircling our planet.
“It’s turning it crowded up there,” cautioned Michelle Hanlon, Co-Founder of For All Moonkind, in recent interview. “And the problem is as it gets more and more crowded, you know, it’s easy to avoid the big pieces. But the big pieces hit each other and they make small pieces and it’s very difficult to avoid the small pieces which are circling the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour,”
These hyper-velocity fragments pose a serious risk to functioning satellites and spacecraft.
“If one of those pieces of debris hit your very expensive satellite or spacecraft, it’s going to do tremendous damage,” Hanlon added.
While some of this space junk falls into Earth’s atmosphere and burns up, other parts become directed into significantly higher so-called “graveyard” orbits. Also, because mega-constellations such as Starlink keep getting denser, the chance for collision is increasing exponentially. Hanlon, like many in the space-environmentalist community, is a strong proponent of active debris removal and tighter rules to ensure a sustainable future for space exploration and commerce. Unattended, this gripping trash of humanity could eventually make specific orbital paths impossible to use.
Featured image: Credit: Extreme Tech
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