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- A discarded Chinese rocket stage and a Soviet-era satellite nearly collided with Earth overnight.
- The collision would have created a lot of new space debris and made our current space debris problem worse.
- As we continue to launch more and more satellites, the potential for space debris to impact manned missions increases.
In case you haven’t heard yet: space junk is becoming a real problem. There is so much artificial junk floating in Earth’s orbit that it actually poses a danger to future space missions and even ongoing programs like the International Space Station. It’s bad, and with companies like SpaceX planning to launch thousands more satellites on a regular basis, it will only get worse.
On Thursday night, the seriousness of our space junk problem became crystal clear when it appeared that an old rocket from a Chinese mission was on its way to collide with an already dead Soviet satellite. The scientists who monitored both objects analyzed the numbers and determined that there was a greater than 10% chance that the objects would collide, which is quite high and certainly worth paying attention to. Fortunately, the two large chunks of space debris lost each other, but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore our space debris problems again.
I know what you’re thinking: “Okay, so an old, dead Soviet satellite almost collided with a fragment of a Chinese rocket. And that?”
While it is true that none of the debris was functional or even important to ongoing operations, a collision could still have been catastrophic. You see, when man-made objects in space collide with each other at high speeds, they create even more debris as a result. That means that two large objects turn into dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of smaller, but still dangerous, objects that continue to orbit Earth.
We are monitoring a very high risk conjunction between two large missing objects in LEO. Multiple data points show a fault distance <25 m and Pc between 1% and 20%. The combined mass of both objects is ~ 2,800 kg.
Object 1: 19826
Object 2: 36123
TCA: October 16 00: 56UTC
Event altitude: 991 km pic.twitter.com/6yWDx7bziw– LeoLabs, Inc. (@LeoLabs_Space) October 13, 2020
Even these smaller objects can cause serious problems for space missions, as something as small as a bolt moving at high speeds can cause incredible damage if it hits a vital piece of cosmic machinery. If, God forbid, a manned spacecraft collides or is hit by a small, fast-moving piece of metal as it heads toward the space station or the Moon, the results could be catastrophic.
On top of that, the smaller an object is, the harder it is to track it from Earth. Two large objects are a problem, sure, but a thousand smaller objects moving at varying speeds and in new directions could spell disaster.
The good news, of course, is that the satellite stage and the rocket didn’t collide with each other. However, the risk of an event like this will not go away anytime soon. Several countries have proposed ways to clean up Earth’s orbit and remove larger chunks of space junk, but so far, there has been very little progress.
Mike Wehner has reported on technology and video games for the past decade, covering the latest news and trends in virtual reality, wearable devices, smartphones, and future technology. Most recently, Mike served as a technology editor at The Daily Dot and has been featured in USA Today, Time.com, and many other print and web media. His love of reporting is second only to his addiction to games.
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