>As more and more pieces of debris accumulate in Earth orbit, collisions between them can generate even more fragments in a frightening theoretical ripple effect known as the Kessler Syndrome. If left unmitigated, the theory proposes that cascading space debris impacts could someday hinder humanity's space ambitions by rendering the space around Earth unpassable.

Wow. That's incredible. I wonder what could be done to reduce space junk if it gets to that point. Would it just be unfixable?

We've companies and missions already looking at space garbage collection

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SL-8 is a U.S. Department of Defense nomenclature for the Kosmos-3 family of Soviet rockets that first entered service in 1964

There's a lot of research into fixing it.

My favorite solution is space lasers. Basically, have a system of lasers in space, even just a few watts for each laser, and target all the tiny pieces of space junk. Similar to how a comet gets a tail when the sun shines on it, a powerful laser would melt bits of the space junk, causing it to lose velocity, and drop out of orbit.

The reason why this hasn't been done, is because the problem isn't yet big enough for it to be done.

It's currently still very unlikely for a cascade like this to begin, but as we put more into space, the chances just keep getting higher.

I think it'll be like the climate crisis, we'll wait until we feel the effects, and then do something to change it while hoping it's not too late.

Yep - RocketLab for one

AstroScale

If you can eliminate space junk, you can just as easily get rid of an enemy’s satellites.

Certainly the coolest solution. One note, objects wouldn't lose velocity by melting. They would lose it because of material ablating off because of the heat.

Thank you for the word "ablating." I had a mental image of this that I was trying to describe, but I couldn't find the exact words for it. So I tried explaining it like a comet, where it heats up and the has bits of it shoot off.

Kessler syndrome is wildly misinderstood. Probably thanks to the movie gravity. I suggest people read the actual wiki on the topic.

Yes, low to mid orbits could become difficult to hold. This would present itself as a small statistical likelihood per year for a satellite in these orbits to be struck.

Higher orbits would not be affected, nor would our ability to travel through these regions whatsoever. We would definitely still be able to travel into space just fine. But hanging out in lower orbits for long periods of time would be somewhat dangerous.

Might be out of my league here. But could you get the space junk and transport it to the moon to possibly recycle it for moon base operations? The idea of bringing it back in the atmosphere is out of question but maybe transport it for other uses somewhere where it won’t do much damage.

We launch a rocket with a thick shield of aero gel. The aerogel catches the small particles, without emitting more. Then we probably put a few of these is permanent orbit, designed to mop up their orbit.

Multiple countries already have that capability. Of course, the proliferation of abilities to do it cheaply might be a concern, but really for the good of us all we need to have the means to quickly and cheaply remove debris from orbit. It is inevitable that something breaks or there’s an accident or there’s debris that needs to be moved before it collides with something important. Or perhaps in the aftermath of a war which may see certain satellites annihilated we’ll need to do cleanup efforts.

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That’s like saying, “why don’t I drive 100 miles to the nearest recycling center to recycle my cardboard box, instead of burning my cardboard box in my backyard fire pit?”

I.e. moon is still really far away and difficult to get to

If a problem can be fixed with a big ass laser, I assert that it is our duty, as humans, to do so. With vigor.

I can think of nothing more human.

We shot a satellite with an F-16 once. Turns out that's easier than getting rid of space junk....

Actually probably made that whole situation worse tbh

Most would eventually fall to earth anyway. It’s more a problem of designing future satellites that are larger and have more functionality. Small satellites are so cheaply to design and shoot up there but it’s a huge issue when it only doesn’t one thing for one company.

They all need to be designed to fall to earth in 5 years or something.

The moon is really, really far away. By comparison these are within arms reach.

Again out of my league but collection of junk would take place in orbit/outside orbit then moved to a transport vessel that could get scooped before the trip out to the moon?

Getting from orbit to the moon is many magnitudes more difficult than getting from orbit back to earth.

If we were able to create such a vessel, bringing it back to earth would be so much more efficient.

The highest orbits are about 23,000 miles above our planet. With the moon being 238,900 miles away on average. And unfortunately we are nowhere near being able to design such a craft. Things in orbit are not just sitting at a consistent speed that we could vacuum up by moving slightly faster.

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Oh my God yeah, someone call the pentagon, we've gotta be able to sell it to them with this description.

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JFK 2.0 - "We choose to do this thing not because it is easy, but because it is supremely fucking cool"

You might be thinking of the F-15 that fired the missile. The missile actually had target-seeking capability so really the F-15 was mostly just an expensive missile launcher.

F-15 actually

It was in 1986 weapons system test

I was at the Space Resiliency Forum in December, and the DoD is certainly taking it seriously…

Also some pretty brilliant folks around space seem to be taking it seriously: McKnight et al.

ESA

Even NASA is working on active debris remediation due to the issues caused by orbital debris

NASA

NASA ADRV

Sure, we could likely still launch to MEO and beyond just fine, but the ISS orbits at 400km. Orbital reef is set to orbit at 500km. We would completely lose sustained human presence in LEO for up to hundreds of years.

Decay by altitude

But I am sure the wiki explained all that to you.

Yep you're right. My B

Also, BYU? Hi neighbor.

You're right. An f-15 with our first ASM. Way back in the mid 80s.

Makes me wonder what kind of sophisticated ASM's we might have now. Or perhaps other anti satellite munitions.

Personally I'm hoping for big ass lasers, for obvious reasons.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |ASAT|Anti-Satellite weapon| |DoD|US Department of Defense| |ESA|European Space Agency| |GEO|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |GNSS|Global Navigation Satellite System(s)| |LEO|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |MEO|Medium Earth Orbit (2000-35780km)| |PNT|Positioning, Navigation and Timing|

^(8 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 15 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8501 for this sub, first seen 31st Jan 2023, 06:57]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

The Solwind ASAT Test was the F-15 launched ASAT to low LEO.

It produced debris that orbited for nearly two decades.

ASAT test Visual

You would need millions of these to have an impact. Which would lead to added debris if these things collide with each other...

We can deorbit the big objects, that removes the largest source of new debris.

The second time around, his initials stand for "Jesus Fucking Khrist"

thats only if anti-satellite missiles arnt used, thats my biggest worry, not an accidental collision, but a series deliberate shoot downs of satellites from one side or another...

Say Some nation was badly loosing a war and wanted to threaten the west....

and thats not taking into account deliberate shooting down of sattelites with missiles, say if one nation was loosing a war badly and blamed the other side supplying weapons to their enemy....

Throw a net on it and drag it back down.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/19/17878218/space-junk-remove-debris-net-harpoon-collisions

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There are no neighborhoods in space, not even in quotation marks.

This is the direct result of corporations and governments not cleaning up after themselves, which is now just normal and depressing. They've all known what would happen if they didn't take action but they all made the decision to kick that can down the road multiple times and now here we are.

How long do we have before they start offloading the blame for orbital debris on rank and file citizens like they've done with carbon emissions?

So an eastern nation?

who knows, but the specific nations isn't as important as the risk of it happening at all, on a large scale...

Question: If all the current satellites were destroyed at once. What would that change tomorrow? Some things I can think of: -GPS/GNSS. -Weather measurements. -Sat TV / news. -Some comms.

I am just thinking that it wasn't that long ago that we didn't have any of that, and we still managed two world wars just fine.

Alternatives to these are: -Knowing where you are/someone else is. -terrestrial weather measurement. -Short wave radio.

I would guess a lot more.. But I dont know the specifics. But the debris would keep all other orbital launches grounded

We can, should, will, and must blow up the moon.

Could call it something like Satellite Harm Amelioration and Reduction Campaign

^(Cannot think of a decent K so SHARC with frikkin lasers it is)

I'll add to his comparison. It's like taking widely scattered of wood chips from your expensive garden to the south pole, where you plan to build your own reprocessing facility to turn the chips into chipboard to build your Antarctic base.

It's such a huge amount of effort for so little gain

>This is the direct result of corporations and governments not cleaning up after themselves

Corporations? Did you even read the article?

It was a soviet spy satellite and a soviet rocket body.

Just call Got Junk. You just point and it disappears!

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• Banking would stop due to loss of timing from GNSS. This has immediate and global ramifications.
• Some disruption to air traffic control as space based ADSB is lost and only available near airports.
• Global sea shipping loses tracking. Most navigation. Global disruption to bulk international supply chains until inertial nav and alternates are reinstalled.
• Military communication and some crypto is lost. Many many intel sources are lost. Most guided munitions are hampered, deterrence is lost in some cases, likely leading to conflict sparking as adversaries try to make use of the more even power equations. SBRS no longer provides nuclear deterrence.
• Weather prediction is significantly impacted. This has flow on effects to logistics, insurance and risk management. Military operations and rescue services are significantly impacted.
• Hubble is lost.
• TESS, Kepler, Chandra etc are gone, setting back some fields of astronomy.
• Astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts die as the ISS and Tiangong are inhabited satellites. All research aboard is lost.

The wiki does explain all of that. Even I explained most of that in my actual post.

That’s cool you went to a forum though I guess.

Can't get much more effective than a missile that does the aiming for you. Since missile tech has already had a lot of funding/testing over the years, the missiles become cheaper to manufacture/sell, meaning which means you can just throw more bombs at the problem for the same amount of money.

Could make a really big laser if we just divert a little bit of the military budget though...

No, on a long enough time scale most of the junk will precipitate down onto Earth, very few orbits are so stable as to be permanent, but that would cut us off for many years.

SpaceX implements suicide burn routines into all of their satellites so they can deorbit themselves if/when they go defunct.

This problem is highly sensationalized. Numerous companies are trying to solve the problem.

Thank you! I was thinking about this earlier today, how long does it stay in orbit. A lot longer than I thought it would be.

Well I just went to college there. And it was actually BYU Idaho. I like to call myself a "recovering" BYUI grad haha.

Oh yeah. That must be the only thing that's up there in what they referred to as "a bad neighborhood," huh?

What happens to decommissioned satellites? Most of them are just abandoned in place and then they just slowly drift out of orbit.

I read the article. You should look past it. This isn't just the result of a handful of recent launches. This stuff has been building up in orbit for decades.

Space X isn't the only entity that's been delivering payloads to orbit for the last 60 years or so, is it?

This problem isn't over-sensationalized, if anything it's been ignored.

Most of the stuff that was put up there remains up there even though it died years ago. That's the nature of putting things in orbit - They tend to stay there.

Which is why there are now regulations that all sats in orbit must have deorbit or maneuvering capability and several companies are investing in cleanup procedures for objects that can’t be deorbited

New regulations don't get rid of old equipment that's been stuck in orbit and is drifting around causing problems.

There are no solutions to this problem right now, and it's a big problem.

I’m more worried about the ISS. It’s bound to happen. And that number is coming up shortly.

If you are interested have a read of the csis space threat assessment. https://aerospace.csis.org/space-threat-assessment-2022/

And report on counterspace weapons https://www.csis.org/analysis/defense-against-dark-arts-space-protecting-space-systems-counterspace-weapons

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There is the LEO sun synchronous 'neighbourhood' which has a high amount of traffic crossing near the poles that is a concern.

GEO could be considered a neighbourhood.

There is 'terrain' in space, just not what people typically think of.

Surely many of these systems have a terrestrial backup.

You'd hope they do but many are not implementable in a quick manner or to the scale we have achieved with space based services. The question was about if they all failed at once, which is why we are quite concerned about coronal mass ejection and other space weather that could knock out our space systems all at once.

There are ground based PNT/augmentation seeking to lessen reliance on GNSS/space based PNT.

The US considers some of these capabilities as critical infrastructure with limited alternatives. Some are unique like the ISS and Hubble.

Remarkably GNSS is one of the largest components of the space industry. Near everything has gps or timing requirements now. https://brycetech.com/reports/report-documents/Bryce_2019_Global_Space_Economy.png

On the upside, it also provides natural protection against alien invasion. You gotta look at the glass as half full.