Europe Gets Serious About Space Junk Menace

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Europe Gets Serious About Space Junk Menace
By Denise Chow, SPACE.com Contributor  | SPACE.com – 20 hrs ago...

Artist’s concept showing how a defunct satellite could be grappled for a controlled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, where it would burn up and be destroyed harmlessly.

Hundreds of scientists, engineers and space-law experts are gathering this week to discuss the growing problem of space debris, and will propose ways to curb the accumulation of new junk in orbit.

The 6th European Conference on Space Debris is being held April 22-25 at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany. More than 300 representatives, ranging from researchers to policymakers, are expected to attend the four-day event, according to officials at the European Space Agency (ESA).

Conference attendees will discuss the buildup of potentially harmful debris in orbit, and address possible ways to remove defunct satellites and other pieces of errant space hardware.

More than 170 million pieces of space junk are currently orbiting Earth, including 29,000 objects that are larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters), according to ESA estimates. As they speed through space at 17,000 mph (27,000 km/h), these objects pose collision risks to both other satellites in orbit and the International Space Station.

"Any of these objects can harm an operational spacecraft," Heiner Klinkrad, head of ESA's Space Debris Office, said in a statement.

Roughly two-thirds of the known pieces of debris were created by explosions in orbit or collisions, ESA officials said.

In 2009, a U.S. Iridium communications satellite was struck by a defunct Russian Cosmos military satellite in what became a wake-up call for the industry. The crash destroyed the two spacecraft and left a huge cloud of debris.

Then, in 2007, China intentionally destroyed one of its aging weather satellites in a controversial anti-satellite test that littered Earth’s orbit with more than 2,500 scraps of space junk.

Since then, researchers and satellite operators have tried to tackle the issue of sustainability in space.

"Space-debris mitigation measures, if properly implemented by satellite designers and mission operators, can curtail the growth rate of the debris population," Klinkrad said. "Active debris removal, however, has been shown to be necessary to reverse the debris increase."

But finding any solution to the space-debris problem will require a collaborative approach.

"As this is a global task, active removal is a challenge that should be undertaken by joint efforts in cooperation with the world's space agencies and industry," Thomas Reiter, ESA's director of human spaceflight and operations, said in a statement.

http://news.yahoo.com/europe-gets-serious-space-junk-menace-193422477.html

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Space Junk Threat Demands Immediate Action, Experts Say
By Mike Wall | SPACE.com – 4 hrs ago...

Artist's conception of a future mission to deorbit a piece of space junk.

Humanity must act now to reduce the vast amount of space junk around Earth to keep the problem from getting completely out of hand, scientists say.

The huge and ever-growing cloud of debris around Earth poses a real threat to satellites and our way of life, researchers stressed this week at the 6th European Conference on Space Debris in Darmstadt, Germany.

"There is a wide and strong expert consensus on the pressing need to act now to begin debris removal activities," Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency's Space Debris Office, said in a statement today (April 25). "Our understanding of the growing space debris problem can be compared with our understanding of the need to address Earth’s changing climate some 20 years ago." [Space Junk Photos & Clean-Up Concepts]

Earth's enormous debris cloud is composed primarily of spent rocket bodies, dead satellites and the fragments generated when these objects collide.

NASA estimates that there are currently 500,000 pieces of space junk bigger than a marble and 22,000 as large as a softball. The number of flecks at least 1 millimeter in diameter probably runs into the hundreds of millions.

These pieces are moving so fast that even a tiny shard could knock out one of the 1,000 or so operational satellites currently orbiting the planet. That's potentially a big problem in our technological society, which is increasingly dependent on satellites to provide communications, Earth observations and other services.

In 2007, an anti-satellite test by China created a vast cloud of debris that continues to plague spacecraft operators today. Another major event occurred in February 2009, when a dead Russian military satellite slammed into an active U.S. communications satellite to create two new clouds of space junk. 

A two-pronged approach is needed to keep space debris under control, scientists said at the conference.

For one thing, future missions must be sustainable, with proper disposal of spacecraft at the end of their operational lives. And the world needs to begin removing debris from orbit soon, or else risk an escalating and self-sustaining cascade of collisions over the coming years.

The projected high price tags of such efforts should not keep them from going forward, experts said.

"While measures against further debris creation and actively deorbiting defunct satellites are technically demanding and potentially costly, there is no alternative to protect space as a valuable resource for our critical satellite infrastructure," Klinkrad said. "Their direct costs and the costs of losing them will by far exceed the cost of remedial activities."

Missions demonstrating efficient and effective cleanup methods need to be given high priority, researchers further stressed, describing debris removal as a global issue on which the world must work together.

http://news.yahoo.com/space-junk-threat-demands-immediate-action-experts-102229890.html