Space debris, also called space junk, artificial material that is orbiting Earth but is no longer functional. This material can be as large as a discarded rocket stage or as small as a microscopic chip of paint. Much of the debris is in low Earth orbit, within 2,000 km (1,200 miles) of Earth’s surface; however, some debris can be found in geostationary orbit 35,786 km (22,236 miles) above the Equator. As of 2018, the United States Space Surveillance Network was tracking more than 14,000 pieces of space debris larger than 10 cm (4 inches) across. It is estimated that there are about 200,000 pieces between 1 and 10 cm (0.4 and 4 inches) across and that there could be millions of pieces smaller than 1 cm. How long a piece of space debris takes to fall back to Earth depends on its altitude. Objects below 600 km (375 miles) orbit several years before reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Objects above 1,000 km (600 miles) orbit for centuries. Because of the high speeds (up to 8 km [5 miles] per second) at which objects orbit Earth, a collision with even a small piece of space debris can damage a spacecraft. For example, space shuttle windows often had to be replaced because of damage from collisions with man-made debris smaller than 1 mm (0.04 inch). (When in orbit, the space shuttle flew tail-forward to protect the forward crew compartment.)
The amount of debris in space threatens both manned and unmanned spaceflight. The risk of a catastrophic collision of a space shuttle with a piece of space debris was 1 in 300. (For missions to the Hubble Space Telescope, with its higher and more debris-filled orbit, the risk was 1 in 185.) If there is a greater than a 1 in 100,000 chance of a known piece of debris colliding with the International Space Station (ISS), the astronauts perform a debris avoidance maneuver in which the ISS’s orbit is raised to avoid collision. On July 24, 1996, the first collision between an operational satellite and a piece of space debris took place when a fragment from the upper stage of a European Ariane rocket collided with Cerise, a French microsatellite. Cerise was damaged but continued to function. The first collision that destroyed an operational satellite happened on February 10, 2009, when Iridium 33, a communications satellite owned by the American company Motorola, collided with Cosmos 2251, an inactive Russian military communications satellite, about 760 km (470 miles) above northern Siberia, shattering both satellites.
The worst space-debris event happened on January 11, 2007, when the Chinese military destroyed the Fengyun-1C weather satellite in a test of an antisatellite system, creating more than 3,000 fragments, or more than 20 percent of all space debris. Within two years those fragments had spread out from Fengyun-1C’s original orbit to form a cloud of debris that completely encircled Earth and that would not reenter the atmosphere for decades. On January 22, 2013, the Russian laser-ranging satellite BLITS (Ball Lens in the Space) experienced a sudden change in its orbit and its spin, which caused Russian scientists to abandon the mission. The culprit was believed to have been a collision between BLITS and a piece of Fengyun-1C debris. Fragments from Fengyun-1C, Iridium 33, and Cosmos 2251 account for about one-half of the debris below 1,000 km (620 miles).
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Martian Cowboy Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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