A while ago I wrote about the amount of
stuff in orbit around the earth . Some of the space debris is junk from rocket launches, but a lot of it is satellites for communications and GPS. I’m not the only one concerned about it. I recently saw a reel with Professor Brian Cox who revealed that Elon Musk has put more satellites into orbit than everyone else combined (including the Russians and the Chinese)! I couldn’t find it again, but the reel showed the numbers of satellites, with dots appearing round the earth as the numbers counted up. When it finally stopped, the earth could barely be seen under the cloud of dots and the numbers were about 9 thousand for Musk and 6 thousand for everyone else. The question is, how do they find room to put up more satellites and how does a spaceship find a way through?
Here’s another reel from Brian Cox:
I found another reel about Keppler syndrome, which describes how collisions of space debris create hundreds of pieces and therefore increase the chances of collisions exponentially:
The Kessler syndrome, also known as the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ablation cascade, is a scenario proposed by NASA scientists Donald J. Kessler and Burton G. Cour-Palais in 1978. It describes a situation in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) becomes so high due to space pollution that collisions between these objects cascade, exponentially increasing the amount of space debris over time.[3] This proliferation of debris poses significant risks to satellites, space missions, and the International Space Station, potentially rendering certain orbital regions unusable and threatening the sustainability of space activities for many generations.
The danger of these space debris pieces was starkly illustrated by the film
Gravity starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney:
Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a brilliant medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, leaving Stone and Kowalsky completely alone – tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.Will there come a time when we can’t launch any more because of the space pollution? Or will they find a way to remove the ‘stuff’ that’s no longer needed and clogging up earth orbit?
Ann Marie Thomas is the author of five medieval history books, a surprisingly cheerful poetry collection about her 2010 stroke and two further poetry collections, and the science fiction series Flight of the Kestrel, of which there are four books are out now. Follow her at http://eepurl.com/bbOsyz and get free books.
