Space Junk Apocalypse

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With America’s stock market currently imploding, now may not be the best time to draw attention to yet another doomsday scenario (this one unfolding in the heavens above). Yet the numbers we see in the sky are eerily similar to the numbers all around us… namely their failure to add up.

Also, unsustainable policies are what continue to drive both impending disasters… with proposed solutions few and far between.

Last summer, I penned an expansive take on the Kessler Syndrome – a.k.a. the “space junk apocalypse” which has human civilization hurtling toward a potentially disastrous, paradigm-altering reboot.

To recap: in 1978, scientists Donald J. Kessler and Burton G. Cour-Palais published a 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.”

In other words, the ever-escalating number of satellites (including space junk/debris) orbiting above the earth inevitably yields collisions – which 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? Well, if you watched director Alfonso Cuarón‘s 2013 movie Gravity, you’re familiar with what it would look like – an uncontrollable chain reaction of “cascades” obliterating every single satellite currently orbiting the earth. This chain reaction would knock out all of the industries which rely in some form or fashion on satellite technology – which is, well, almost all of them. In addition to severing the backbone of our new, modern economy, such an incident would simultaneously make future space travel prohibitive due to the cloud of debris floating over the planet.

The threat of such a civilization-altering disaster increased significantly in 2024, according to a report issued last week from the European Space Agency (ESA).

According to the report (.pdf), there were 1.2 million objects larger than a square centimeter orbiting the earth last year – including 50,000 larger than ten centimeters. Of those in the latter group, 40,000 are being tracked – a number which is up 8% from the previous year.

“The amount of objects, their combined mass, and their combined area has been steadily rising since the beginning of the space age, leading to the appearance of involuntary collisions between operational payloads and space debris,” ESA scientists noted.

NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office says there are “over 100,000,000 objects of one millimeter or smaller” circling overhead – each with the potential to create additional “cascades.”

“Even the smallest objects are dangerous when traveling at extreme orbital speeds,” the office noted.

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Meanwhile, “launch traffic is still at the highest rate seen thus far,” with the “density of active payloads (now) approaching that of space debris” in heavily populated altitude bands above the earth. Not surprisingly, this has raised questions about “the adequacy of space debris mitigation guidelines and possible ways for sustainable space operations.”

Particularly concerning was the fact last year saw “several significant fragmentations” – which created more than 3,000 newly catalogued fragments.

Many of those fragments, our audience will recall, were attributable to the destruction of a Chinese Long March 6A rocket carrying a satellite system intended to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink.

“If we extrapolate current trends into the future, as before, catastrophic collision numbers could rise significantly,” the report concluded.

Accompanying the release of the report was an eight-minute mini-documentary entitled Space Debris: Is It A Crisis?

(Click to view)

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As for Kessler, he maintained that the world’s first  “hypervelocity incident” – the 2009 collision of an out-of-service Russian military satellite (Kosmos 2251) with an American communications satellite (Iridium 33) 490 miles above the Taymyr Peninsula in northern Siberia – had started the chain reaction.

“It’s building up as I expected,” he told reporter Corrinne Burns of The (U.K.) Guardian in 2012. “The cascade is happening right now – the Kosmos-Iridum collision was the start of the process. It has already begun.”

Remediation efforts are being discussed, but even if they are developed and deployed it remains a race against the unknown… and the consequences of losing that race are simply unthinkable.

We’ll keep our eyes heavenward as scientists continue tracking this phenomenon, but the disturbing truth about the Kessler Syndrome is if it truly takes hold… no one will be able to tell the tale. Nor, for that matter, hear it told.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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