Apart from the dangers humans have themselves created on Earth, there is another continuously orbiting us and threatening the very survival of our satellites in space.
According to NASA Space Surveillance Network (SSN), more than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris or “space junk” are being tracked against possible hit and nearly 3,000 inactive satellites are still in space.
Much of the smaller junk, just large enough to threaten human spaceflights and other missions exists incessantly in the near-Earth space environment.
Orbits of 800-965 km altitude passing over the Earth’s poles are worst affected by this debris and recorded the very first such hitting accident, back in 2009.
Since then, there have been numerous hits, the latest on being a bigger rogue-turned chunk of Chinese Long March-5B falling in the Indian Ocean.
With SpaceX entering passionately into the arena and with Elon Musk’s far-fetched aspirations for Space including the Starlink satellites or the Rideshare missions, more vehicles are being sent to the space to eventually linger as junk.
What has been our response to the Debris?
For now, this debris is largely tracked and avoided. Consequently, different Countries began protecting their respective satellites in the long run.
India’s ISRO has also launched Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis (NETRA) to assist in this regard. And in case of probable hit, debris avoidance maneuvers are planned and conducted.
The International Space Station has so far conducted 29 debris avoidance maneuvers since 1999, including three alone in 2020.
With the fair perception of the problem, new launches are carefully designed and planned so that after successive stages of rocket detachment, the components may hit an empty patch of ocean.
But even a tiny paint fleck, when traveling at such high velocities, can damage a complete spacecraft. And as per NASA, there are over 30,000 objects larger than a softball in orbit, traveling at speeds up to 18,000 miles per hour.
Plus, there are likely 900,000 objects being smaller than 10 cm but larger than 1 cm, and also tens of millions of objects smaller than 1 cm. Unfortunately, none of these are tracked by the current system.
Therefore, mere avoidance can never be an option.
This has left the space industry and its stakeholders with bare two possibilities:
Need for action, i.e., countries and prominent organizations set up a framework able to address the problem of space debris. This could turn negative for the private space industry.
Need for caution i.e., both the space industry and regulatory bodies can join hands to shape transparent rules. This sort of dealing may help in this regard without hindering progress in the private space sector.
But this has been an arduous and time-consuming task.
Several space organizations have hence, begun to reduce this burden in Earth’s vicinity. Although the use of Artificial Intelligence has been proposed for grabbing and groping such lingering pieces in the immediate Universe.
ESA was first to plan ClearSpace-1 to remove an item of debris from an intended orbit with proposed launch in 2025.
Another launch of the ELSA-d mission demonstrates such efficiency in the efforts by a number of companies to conduct a large-scale, celestial litter-picking exercise using magnetic retrieval.
How SpaceX’s Mars-bound Starship will help clean the space junk?
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also dropped-in a hint about Starship featuring a solution that ‘chomp(s) up’ the space debris.
Yes, we can fly Starship around space & chomp up debris with the moving fairing door
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 3, 2021
In response to a tweet by a curious soul, asking him about how to eventually collect all the surrounding space debris, Musk tweeted, “We can fly Starship around space and chomp up debris with the moving fairing door.”
Musk did not describe out it in detail but the user guide for the vehicle describes the fairing door as a massive cover, capable of operating by itself after attaining life in a certain orbit.
Before the Starship will come back down to Earth, this door will be capable of closing itself.
Agreed by SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, Starship can pick up space junk that is currently orbiting our planet. This concerned junk can be stored back in its cargo bay until the vehicle may safely reach back to Earth.
He explains: “It’s not going to be easy, but I do believe Starship offers the possibility of going and doing that.”
While we doubt on the aforesaid fiction-like capabilities, we are also sure of SpaceX’s unconventional ambitions and capabilities when it comes to space.
Hoping for a cleaner Space, is a form of wishful thinking. Thankfully, our space organizations and even private space firms are on it.