Humans have managed to pollute the land, the seas, and the atmosphere of our precious planet. We now realize the dangers of such pollution and are working hard to reverse, to the extent possible, the processes that create such pollution. Another kind of pollution is beginning to endanger our well-being as a species. The problem is often referred to as “space junk.” In the seven decades since the advent of space flight in 1957, we have launched a large number of satellites, some of which are still functional and provide valuable services in communications, monitoring, observation, navigation, and surveillance. The number of such satellites has been growing steadily and is slated for even greater growth with our insatiable need for additional communication bandwidth and proposals for exotic projects such as energy harvesting and space-based data centers. Alongside the functioning satellites, we also have dead satellites and a host of space trash: Discarded rocket parts, ballistic missile pieces, debris created by explosions or collision between space objects, dropped tools, coolant droplets, and thermal paint flakes. Until now, we have managed to deal with such space junk, given the fairly low density of objects and the vastness of space. We are now at a critical stage when detection followed by evasive maneuvers to dodge space junk is becoming less feasible. NASA estimates that by early 2025, there were more than 25,000 fairly large objects in Earth's orbit. The number of space junk items may increase exponentially due to collisions between existing items. It is high time that we give serious thought to dealing with trash in space, as we do on Earth.
Speaker(s): Behrooz Parhami,
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