Space Debris and Climate Changes

(Artistic concept of the explosion of a skyrocket in our space.)

We can observe climate changes everywhere on our planet, but a news from “New Scientist” brings to our attention a new research demonstrating that the climate changes are influencing even the space environment. The CO2 increase is cooling many layers of our atmosphere, this provokes a decrease of its density. This can be seen as an increase of the time our debris are in orbit. And that’s not really good.

The atmospheric friction provokes a destructive effect on those debris, and eventually can drive those pieces to our planet, with their consequent burn. Two researchers of Southampton University in Great Britain: Arrun Saunders and Hugh Lewis, studied the orbits of 30 satellites in the last 40 years and they recorded a gradual increase of the time those satellites are in our orbit. They calculated that at an altitude of 300km, the atmosphere is reducing its density of about 5% every decade. “Less density, less molecules. This means that those debris will suffer less friction, so they will remain in orbit for 25% more time”, said Lewis.

(Image of debris and satellites actually in orbit.)

These increase the risk of collisions between satellites and makes more dangerous the launch of a spaceship. The new space agencies and the private companies will have to accelerate their procedures about the mitigation of space debris now that we’re in time. We must find a solution to this “space garbage” before it can cause real issues.

There’s enough debris currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures, the report notes. In addition, collisions with debris have disabled and even destroyed satellites in the past, as in the collision in 2009 between an Iridium satellite and a inoperative Russian satellite. Several recent near-misses of the International Space Station requiring evasive maneuvers and sending astronauts to the Soyuz vehicles as a precaution underscores the value in monitoring and tracking orbital debris as precisely as possible.

It is fitting that Kessler lead this committee: he laid out a scenario back in 1978 called the Kessler Syndrome where the amount and size of objects in Earth’s orbit could eventually become so large that they would continually collide with one another and create even more debris, eventually causing a “cascade” of collisions which could make low Earth orbit unusable for decades.

From the new report, it appears the Kessler Syndrome is not just an abstract event that might occur in the future. It’s happening now.