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On the morning of February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart during its scheduled reentry into the earth’s atmosphere. The disintegration was captured on live television by WFAA TV-8 (ABC – Dallas), one of many views of the tragedy which became instantaneously seared into our nation’s consciousness.
What happened? Sixteen days before the disaster, during its liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the leading edge of Columbia‘s left wing was struck by a piece of foam insulation attached to its external fuel tank. The foam strike – which occurred just 81.7 seconds into the mission – doomed the orbiter and sealed the fate of its seven-person crew. During the shuttle’s reentry a little more than two weeks later, superheated gases leaked into the hole punched by the foam – literally melting away the structural integrity of the left wing.
When the wing went, the shuttle went with it – breaking apart over Texas and Louisiana.
All told, 84,000 pieces of debris from the vehicle were recovered – including the remains of the seven astronauts. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the government agency which operated the shuttle program, that represented approximately 40 percent of Columbia‘s pre-flight weight.
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While not all of the debris from the Columbia tragedy was ultimately recovered, all of it did fall to earth – or disintegrated during reentry. And thankfully, there were no injuries on the ground associated with the falling debris.
What would have happen, though, if a shuttle-sized spacecraft (or a space station) were to break apart in orbit?
Such a scenario was violently portrayed in Gravity, a 2013 film directed, co-written and co-produced by Alfonso Cuarón. Gravity won seven Academy Awards the following year (back when people still watched the Academy Awards) – including best sound editing, best visual effects and best cinematography. I actually wrote about the movie that spring as part of my fascination with its main character. And when I say “main character” I’m not referring to the ageless Sandra Bullock or the actor-turned-activist George Clooney.
The star of Gravity was a scientific theory dubbed The Kessler Syndrome. The brainchild of scientists Donald J. Kessler and Burton G. Cour-Palais, the Kessler Syndrome was first posited in a 1978 paper entitled “Collision frequency of artificial satellites: The creation of a debris belt.”
“As the number of artificial satellites in earth orbit increases, the probability of collisions between satellites also increases,” the abstract to Kessler and Cour-Palais’ report noted. “Satellite collisions would produce orbiting fragments, each of which would increase the probability of further collisions, leading to the growth of a belt of debris around the earth.”
Basically, Kessler and Cour-Palais believed the ever-escalating number of satellites (and space junk/debris) orbiting above the earth made future satellite collisions inevitable – and these collisions will one day snowball into “ablation cascades” of debris which will in turn cause additional collisions (and larger fields of debris).
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The doomsday scenario? An uncontrollable chain reaction of “cascades” which would destroy every single satellite currently orbiting the earth – knocking out all the banking, energy, internet, phone, navigational and related industries which rely on satellite technology. In addition to severing the backbone of our new, modern economy, such a chain reaction would simultaneously make future space travel prohibitive due to the cloud of debris floating over the planet.
Believe it or not, there has already been one mid-space collision. On February 10, 2009 at 4:56 p.m. UTC, the world’s first “hypervelocity incident” took place when an out-of-service Russian military satellite (Kosmos 2251) smashed into an operational American communications satellite (Iridium 33) approximately 490 miles above the Taymyr Peninsula in northern Siberia. The two satellites collided despite being projected to miss each other by nearly 2,000 feet.
NASA initially tracked at least 1,000 pieces of large debris resulting from the crash, but within two years that total had climbed to 2,000 pieces.
The following year, a massive 18,000-pound European Space Agency (ESA) satellite named Envisat was nearly struck by a Chinese upper-stage rocket body weighing four tons. According to officials with the U.S. Joint Space Operations Center, the two orbiting objects missed each other by a mere 48 yards – narrowly avoiding what ESA officials called “a major orbital debris issue.”
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On March 24, 2012, a piece of Kosmos 2251 came within four hundred feet of the International Space Station – prompting its six crew members to huddle inside a pair of docked spacecraft until the debris had passed.
Interviewed in 2012, Kessler told reporter Corrinne Burns of The (U.K.) Guardian that his famous “syndrome” was more than just solid science… according to him, it was (and is) an active, observable phenomenon.
“It’s building up as I expected,” he said. “The cascade is happening right now – the Kosmos-Iridum collision was the start of the process. It has already begun.”
Scientists aren’t debunking him, either. In an interview this spring with Jon Kelvey of Aerospace America, physicist Mark Matney – who works for NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office – issued an ominous warning.
“We’re on a timescale of something like a one in ten chance each year of another major collision,” he told Kelvey.
Wait… a one-in-ten chance each year? And the last major collision was fifteen years ago?
Those are not good odds for something the world depends on…
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According to Matney, the Kosmos-Iridium collision was a “harbinger of things to come” – although he insisted doomsday predictions were off-base because NASA is projecting “linear” not “exponential” growth in orbital debris.
And NASA wouldn’t lie, right?
Kelvey’s article also quoted Vishnu Reddy, a University of Arizona professor who runs the Space4 (Space Safety, Security and Sustainability) center in Tucson, Arizona. According to Reddy, it’s a question of when… not if Kessler’s theory comes to pass.
“I think we’re not there yet, but we’re approaching the situation very quickly,” Reddy told Kelvey. “The debate is about when it will happen, whether it is five years from now, 10 years from now or 20 years from now.”
The math is certainly working against mankind. As of this writing, there are nearly 9,000 operational satellites orbiting the earth and 500,000 identified pieces of space debris – a total which continues to expand. While those numbers may not sound particularly frightening given the vastness of space, consider each of them is hurtling around the globe at or near 17,000 miles per hour.
What does that look like? Courtesy of the ESA…
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Just this month, a Chinese Long March 6A rocket carrying a satellite system which intends to rival Elon Musk‘s Starlink broke up into hundreds of pieces at an altitude of more than 500 miles above the earth. According to U.S. Space Command, the incident created “over 300 pieces of trackable debris.” According to a report in The Wall Street Journal last week, a U.S. space tracking firm called LeoLabs estimated the real number of debris pieces associated with the rocket breakup was closer to 700 – making it “one of the largest rocket breakups in history.”
For a country putting nearly 70 rockets in space a year, that’s a troubling development…
What’s the solution? In addition to launching satellites which automatically de-orbit (or move themselves into “graveyard” orbits) at the completion of their lifespan, NASA is currently considering a wide range of space debris remediation techniques – including controlled reentry, uncontrolled reentry, recycling, sweeping, laser nudges (from the ground and from space) and “just-in-time” collision avoidance via laser nudges and rapid response rockets.
According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), there is “an immediate need to address the space debris problem.”
“Existing U.S. government and commercial infrastructure (the International Space Station and commercial internet and science satellites) is at risk,” the FAS noted. “The faster space debris is addressed, the more space innovation and invention we will see in the coming decades.”
And the less we will have to concern ourselves with a cataclysm in the skies above us… assuming we manage to avoid one in the meantime.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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