The Troubled Orbits

Like other forms of debris in terrestrial and marine environments, space debris prompts questions about how well we look after our environment, and what we can do to be better custodians in the future.

Although advanced technical societies have come to increasingly rely on space based infrastructure, they have, so far, failed to meaningfully address the scale of accruing orbital debris. Only very recently has the awareness of space debris as a severe risk to both space and Earth infrastructures increased within the space community.

With the commercially driven “New Space age,” space debris is increasingly framed by space policy makers as a sustainability risk: private space entrepreneurs, have been adding to the large pile of twentieth-century space debris by launching unprecedented numbers of new satellites into orbit.

Although the notion of a vast universe is persistent, orbits, the “paths” on which satellites encircle the Earth, are far from endless. As contemporary societies largely depend on functioning satellite networks for data transfer, communication and navigation services, and climate and crisis monitoring, space debris is understood as a threat to planetary and orbital infrastructures.

For some, the congested orbits might even put an end to ideas of escaping our planet for other places in the cosmos, as safe launches of future spacecraft would be hindered by space debris.

It becomes an absolute necessity that the Wall-E predicted orbital dystopia remains a fictional fate envisioned by Pixar animators, and not a circumstantial rendering of the future for humanity’s presence in space.

Debris in Space

Although there is an emerging body of work that provides a valuable point of departure for exploring outer space as a convergence of scientific, technical, political, and cultural activities, space debris and the issue of crowded orbits have not been sufficiently empirically addressed.

Beginning with the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, from commercial communications satellites to the International Space Station, artificial objects populate the space around our planet.

In the past several decades society has benefited from these orbital advancements and continues to become more and more reliant on the technology orbiting Earth. Some of the major fields which increasingly rely on satellite services are:

• Financial Industry
• IoT
• Mass Media and Communication
• Aerospace Industry
• Construction Industry
• Agritech
• Defence Services
• Launch Industry
• Energy Industry

Parallel to these, contemporary culture revolves around access to the internet, television, cell phones and GPS – all of which utilise satellites for communications or positioning. With humanity’s ever-increasing presence in space, however, comes an ever-increasing presence of space debris – presenting a threat to satellite functionality and safety .

Every satellite that is launched into orbit is accompanied by a plethora of used rocket motors and spent fuel tanks. Antiquated satellites explode from residual propellant pressure or old batteries, sending fragmented pieces of junk tumbling into the same orbital lanes employed by operational spacecraft and crewed space missions.

With many countries fostering new space programs and numerous nations already launching satellites, the orbital debris issue is predicted to only get worse in the coming years.

Now the questions which need immediate answers are: Who gets to make the rules? Who becomes the garbage collector and who becomes the space traffic controller? The more populated orbits become, the more dangerous they are for other satellites in the future.

You can read more about these in the next blog of our series soon.