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.
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... ) 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:
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.
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.
That's the problem...there is no viable solution at the moment. I can't even think of where to start, aside from something ridiculous like 'Big Magnets in space!'
The laser-based suggestions sound pretty feasible. A laser based on the moon might even be plausible. The key is that you don't necessarily need a lot of energy to bump a piece of debris enough to knock it out of orbit.
there might be no patent remedy for this, but there are already several projects in the space pipeline to target at least some aspects of it [0]:
The ConeXpress - Orbital Life Extension Vehicle (CX-OLEV)
presents the operators of geostationary communications
satellites ("comsats") with a pioneering opportunity to
extend the revenue-earning life of their space assets
by up to 10 years.
the most interesting feature to avoid extra space debris with the OLEV would be:
removal from the geostationary orbit to a disposal orbit.
of course this would not clean up the space junk, but at least some more might be prevented.
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.
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.
21 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 54.0 ms ] threadhttp://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2007/01/china_blows_u...
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... ) 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
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.
http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/orions_laser_hunting_spac...
[0] http://telecom.esa.int/telecom/www/object/index.cfm?fobjecti...
(I happen to be in the latter camp)
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.
Are there any ideas with a TRL>napkin?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvage_1