ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
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ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
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Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#2ESA’s 2024 Space Environment Report, which is what the article references: https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/ESA_Space_Envi...
Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#3Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it.
The answer is exactly what governments and industry have been doing for at least two decades now. Tracking of in-orbit objects, coordinated conjunction response, and rules that require either manual or drag-induced reentry cleanup at the end of a mission. Active maneuverable satellites in orbit (like Starlink) aren't a fundamental problem. The number of objects has gone up significantly, but the big actors are coordinating and following good practices.
Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#4I guess talking about Kessler Syndrome is worth while here. A chain reaction where one collision, leads to more, which leads to more. It may be a slow motion chain reaction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
We definitely do need a way to clean things up, it is a shared resource. Unfortunately that means it suffers from tragedy of the commons.
Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#5Humans ruin everything.
Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#6How massive would an object need to be to attract space debris using the object's gravitational pull?
I am guessing it is way more massive than anything we can put into orbit.
Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#7Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it. The answer is exactly what governments and industry have been doing for at least two decades now…
> These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it.
Well, it's not about debris, it's about the capability to sneak up to an enemy satellite and disrupt it without outright destroying it or making it look like a failure.
Shooting a satellite with a rocket ("ASAT") is easy enough - the US, China, Russia and India have proven that capability, and Israel likely has it as well. EMPs from nuclear blasts are another option. But either of that leaves undeniable traces (an EMP blast would likely fry a lot of stuff on the ground!) and the debris can endanger your own satellites as well, so you need something that acts in-space, preferably very difficult to observe from Earth. And something that can grab a dead satellite and drag it out of orbit can also just go and deposit a small explosive charge.
And at that point, 50 million euros are chump change to test that capability - if needed, replace the magnet/hook/whatever with a bomb and that's it.
Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#8Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it. The answer is exactly what governments and industry have been doing for at least two decades now…
You can deorbit debris without physical contact, but you could argue the method results in a weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_broom
Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#9How massive would an object need to be to attract space debris using the object's gravitational pull? I am guessing it is way more massive than anything we can put into orbit.
You would not be attracting stationary objects, you would be attracting things flying past at tens of thousands of whatever unit per hour you like best. Gravity is nowhere near strong enough to affect these objects for purposes of collecting them.
Re: ESA report shows unsustainable levels of orbital debris
#10Active debris removal (harpoon satellites, magnet arms, whatever) are not a solution to this problem and are a huge waste of money. These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it. The answer is exactly what governments and industry have been doing for at least two decades now…
> These missions answer the question "could one dock with debris and deorbit it?" To which the answer is "obviously yes, but at enormous cost" and you don't need to spend 50M euros to prove it. Well, it's not about debris, it's about the capability to sneak up to an enemy satellite and disrupt it without outright destroying it or making it look like a failure. Shooting a satellite with a rocket ("ASAT") is easy enoug…
What's the X-37 cost again? $200M over 4 years of development?