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Space Debris Has Hit and Damaged the International Space Station
- chovybizzass 5y agoDidn't the Chinese blow up a satellite 10 years ago?
- LeoPanthera 5y agoYou are referring to the 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test, during which the Chinese FY-1C weather satellite was intentionally destroyed by a "kinetic kill vehicle". But FY-1C was at an orbit height of 865 kilometres, and the ISS orbits at less than half that altitude. It's not impossible for debris to have reached the ISS, but it is unlikely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_missile_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...
- extropy 5y agoThat test is still responsible for 30% of debris up there. And is scattered across quite a wide band of orbital altitudes.
- Gwypaas 5y agoAnother amazingly horrifying example is Project West Ford[0] in 1963 which dispersed 480 000 000 copper needles at an altitude of ~3500 km to create an artificial ionosphere facilitating military communications. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford
- airhead969 5y agoProject Obvious Idioms ended in utter failure when the haystacks were lost, creating a conundrum of Biblical proportions. Who thought it would be a great, timeless idea to dump a bunch of copper wire strands at 3.5 Mm? Oh, it was that pinhead: Walter E. Morrow. Thanks for that military-industrial complex contribution to littering. Let's stick a Tesla, Lego, and some dead people in space while we're at it. We did that already too? Why don't you tell me these things? Throw me a frickin bone here, people. Maybe we should think carefully about permanent space garbage or space sunshades before rolling with what seems like a brilliant technical solution?
- robocat 5y ago“The orbit and design of the individual needles were chosen to promote rapid orbital decay and reentry into the atmosphere.”. However needles unexpectedly clumped and there are clumps of them still orbiting. Scroll down to page three of: https://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/pdfs/odqnv17i4.pdf https://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/quarterly-news/pdfs/o...
- this_was_posted 5y agoFrom your link: "As of April 2019, 3000 of the 10,000 pieces of space debris routinely tracked by the US Military as a threat to the International Space Station were known to have originated from the 2007 satellite shoot down.". This does not make it seem unlikely to me.
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- BelenusMordred 5y agoCan we all chip in for a fund so the countries that have no qualms about the inevitable tragedy of the commons situation can test their anti-sat missiles elsewhere? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_anti-satellite_missile_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_anti-satellite_mis...
- vagrantJin 5y agoNo. Its unfortunate but countries should invest in anti-satellite technology - especially countries with no bone is the space fight. Should a political situation develop that makes access to satellites advantageous - reducing LEO surveillance satellites to rubble is the best solution.
- bottled_poe 5y agoSince none of the downvotes replied.. I guess you are getting downvotes because others don’t like the idea, though your premise for national security seems reasonable.
- La1n 5y agoExactly, it's weird to think that militarization of space should be something no one can defend themselves against. If a radar installation or military intelligence unit on land is a valid target, it should be in space too. This testing and development of ASAT weapons is fully a response to the countries putting military technology in space.
- Xplune13 5y agoOnly if those 'western' countries which care so much about the space and environment clean up their mess first. The mess which is many times more than other countries. I'm not saying that these tests are right but the hypocrisy of these western countries is really baffling at times.
- forty 5y agoI'm not sure they were pointing out specifically non western countries. According to the article they linked, the US is one of the 4 countries that did such tests.
- isoprophlex 5y agoDoes anyone have any ballpark figures on the decay time of the debris blanket we're putting around the earth? Say we plunge ourselves into nuclear or biological anarchy and society regresses 50.000 years... will our descendants still suffer our shortsightedness?
- exporectomy 5y agoIt seems to be only a couple of years (losing 100m altitude per day [1] ) for the ISS to fall out of orbit if it was left alone. I guess space debris in the same orbit would be the same. [1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9482/how-long-would-iss-stay-in-orbit-if-it-didnt-get-reboosts https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9482/how-long-woul... Higher orbits would last essentially forever though. These tiny objects aren't that disastrous either. From what I understand, the insulating blankets destroy them and dissipate their energy, limiting damage to the underlying structure.
- adrianN 5y agoThat strongly depends on the altitude. LEO still has fairly strong atmospheric drag, so trash from there lives on the order of years. Higher up, say geostationary, the drag is very small, so trash is stable for hundreds or thousands of years. But then again, there is a lot more space the further out you go.
- bagels 5y agoDecades or centuries above 1000km...
- ryankrage77 5y ago> there is a lot more space the further out you go. This made curious how much more space you get, so I did some maths. According to Wikipedia, LEO is basically anything below 2000KM, so we'll call 1000KM the average. Geostationary orbit is apparently 35,786KM above the surface (at the equator. The earth is not a perfect sphere). The diameter of the earth is 12,742KM, making the circumference of this LEO ~43,171KM Let's say there's 10KM between every piece of debris, meaning you can fit 4317 piece of debris into this orbit. (that's not how it really works of course, this is just an arbitary number to use as a comparison). At geostationary orbit, the circumference is ~152,000KM, meaning the same 4317 pieces of debris would now be ~35KM apart instead. Or you could fit 15,200 peices of debris in, still spaced 10KM apart. Or you could say you have ~252% more space at the higher orbit.
- etaioinshrdlu 5y agoThis is fascinating, but I do have an off topic question: why does a robotic arm need a thermal blanket?
- zdkl 5y agoProbably to mitigate material stress due to temperature swings from alternating exposure to sunlight.
- bleuarff 5y agoI'm no expert, but there's probably some electronics in that arm whose operating temperature range is a lot higher than the temperature of space.
- bagels 5y agoTypically the electronics are trying to shed heat, not retain it since there is no air convection.
- frederikvs 5y agoWhile there is no air convection, there is a lot of heat loss via radiation. Of course, if there's a CPU in there that's drawing lots of power (e.g. image processing), it will have to shed that heat. But if there's only some electronics in there that don't eat up too much power, there's a good chance they'll use the thermal blanket (and even heaters) to keep them warm. I don't have the details on the Canadarm, but I can tell you that a lot of electronics on satellites use thermal blankets and heating elements to keep warm.
- StreamBright 5y agoThermodynamics in space are crazy. You usually either overcool or overheat (depending on facing the Sun or facing deep space) there is no normal operation. Thermal insulation is a must.
- qbasic_forever 5y agoAw come on let's not shame the poor robot arm. Space is a cold and lonely place--I'd want a blanket too. :)
- sanatgersappa 5y agoIs anyone working on a Star Trek style "deflector shield"?
- choeger 5y agoIIRC, NASA was working on something like this. They wanted to enclose a space ship with a bubble of charged particles and then create a strong magnetic field with or through these particles. Anything metallic would have been deflected.
- elihu 5y agoSomething I imagine might work (though not really as a shield, but more of a preventative measure) would be to have a few objects in orbit with a very large surface area, so that orbital debris is likely to run into it and get knocked into an orbit that intersects the atmosphere. Let's say these objects have a thousand times more surface area than the objects you actually care about. This would mean that any random piece of debris is far more likely to hit the large debris target than the important satellites. Making something that can be hit by random objects at extreme velocities without generating even more debris sounds like a hard problem, though. Ice would be an interesting material because it sublimates, but it happens too quickly to be practically useful.
- fallingknife 5y agoThe problem is that at orbital velocity, the debris that hits the target will break off pieces of the target, and then you just have more debris.
- foxrider 5y agoI'm thinking something like a non-Newtonian gel in a foil wrap
- airhead969 5y agoSpace might not be warm enough for most STFs. Perhaps a graphene / aerogel composite in a gold foil winter holiday gift basket wrap.
- orbital-decay 5y ago>The inevitable has occurred This makes it sound like it was some sort of an unique event. ISS has huge surface area, and MMOD impacts are practically routine, damaging all sorts of equipment - radiators, batteries, pumps, solar panels, and even heatshields and windows (Cupola windows got hit by debris a couple times, so now they are kept closed when not in use). https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2019paper/pdf/6001.pdf https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2... >The ISS impact database is maintained at the NASA/JSC by the Hypervelocity Impact Technology (HVIT) group. The database contains over 1,400 records of impact damage from ground-based observations of space-exposed hardware returned from ISS >MMOD damage areas of interest acquired from EVA and IVA sources mentioned here are collected in an image database managed by the Image Science and Analysis Group at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). There are currently 380 records tagged as “MMOD” in the database, although it should be noted that some of these records include multiple MMOD damages (i.e., there are more than 380 MMOD impacts represented in this database). And that's only the detected ones. Even detecting the strikes in orbit is hard; automation of all sorts is being developed for this job. (strain sensors, microphones, ML-assisted visual analysis etc)
- Dylan16807 5y ago> It's a sobering reminder that the low-Earth orbit's space junk problem is a ticking time bomb. "Space junk that can hit the ISS" and "space junk that's a long-term problem" are two nearly separate groups.
- efxhoy 5y agoWhy is that? Is the ISS in such a low orbit that any junk in the same orbit will slow down from the drag and de-orbit itself?
- Dylan16807 5y agoYes. Not instantly but on average it's not a particularly long wait. Even just dipping down there in a non-circular orbit causes a lot of drag.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoTrue, but remember that the orbits above LEO are also full of junk that will eventually be coming down through LEO before deorbiting. So despite the short lifetime of debris there it'll still be a long-term problem in this orbit as there'll be new junk even if we would stop orbiting stuff. There'll be crap coming down for thousands of years, including some nasty cold war relics like nuclear reactor cores.
- shkkmo 5y agoThe greatest concentration of space junk is around 500 miles and will take decades to decay down to 250 miles where the ISS or orbits.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoIndeed, but this is what makes it a long-term problem :)
- bserge 5y ago
- LordOfWolves 5y ago> ..[the] space debris problem does seem to be increasing. Last year, the ISS had to perform emergency maneuvers three times in order to avoid collisions with space debris at its altitude of around 400 kilometers (250 miles). I wish I could do something about this. What can an “ordinary” civilian in the US do to help? Are we limited to electing politicians with the hope they follow through on a potential campaign promise?
- qbasic_forever 5y agoSpace debris isn't a new problem or something that's coming entirely out of the blue. NASA has almost certainly built it into the plans and engineering to keep ISS going for years and years. The fact they do maneuvers, keep meticulous track of large debris, etc. is a great sign that the systems they have in place are working. I'd honestly be more worried about the political capitol and will to spend money on the space program drying up more than debris strikes.
- txdv 5y agowatch animes about collecting space debris
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoDepends on how much money you wish to donate or how much skilled you are. Other than that I don't think there is much need for “ordinary” civilian to create FUD regarding this in online forums.
- swarnie_ 5y ago> Over 23,000 pieces are being tracked in low-Earth orbit to help satellites and the ISS avoid collisions - but they're all about the size of a softball or larger. Why do they always do this, give a non-standard unit of measurement which 90% of countries in the world for no reference for. Its like when they describe something as "X number of football fields" - Nice one, only one country plays and misnames Handegg. its useless to the rest of us.
- Mediterraneo10 5y agoSoftball is played in more countries than the USA, albeit rarely professionally. It isn't unusually to see softballs for sale in your local Decathlon.
- pmontra 5y agoA softball is not even a unit of measurement :-) I had to google what it is.
- nexuist 5y agoAren't a soccer and football field around the same length?
- Tade0 5y agoThere's a whole culture of mocking such units with invented ones. My favourite so far would be "burger per square eagle", which is a unit of distance. It's actually sort of a puzzle - you have to imagine how to interpret the units so that they match the result. I remember starting off using someone's idea to take a bald eagle's average wingspan (2.7m - which is incorrect BTW). What follows is that the burger must represent volume - I modeled the burger as a half sphere with a diameter of 13cm, which yielded ~500ccm - sounded believable enough. The only issue remaining was that the unit was very small - a small fraction of a millimetre. Then again measuring things in megaburgers (per square eagle) sounds fairly natural - a lot like kilometres or kilograms.
- pabs3 5y agoI wonder if we will ever get to the space debris situation that is depicted in the movie Space Sweepers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sweepers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Sweepers
- airhead969 5y agoReduce, Reuse, Deorbit (3R's was a campaign manufactured by the plastics industry to shift environmental blame onto individuals rather than what industry could've done, such as: waste stream capture, lifecycle management, material minimization, minimum recycled content, and so on.)
- smackeyacky 5y agoWhy deorbit? It cost a lot of money to get that junk off the planet, surely its more valuable up there for somebody smart to harvest it and reuse it in place.
- Sharlin 5y agoWell, the stuff is there right now, but there’s nobody harvesting them because it’s nowhere near economically viable. Maybe someday in the future, but we can’t just keep polluting the orbits while waiting for that hypothetical day. LEO stuff is going to deorbit due to drag anyway sooner or later, and we very much would like that to be ”sooner”. Higher orbits are stable for a long time, and intentional deorbiting is not feasible anyway due to the amount of delta-v needed. So there are ”graveyard orbits” into which satellites should be moved before they’re out of propellant. Anyway, intercepting and capturing defunct satellites on a large scale would be surprisingly costly because of the large variety of orbital planes involved. Inclination changes are expensive with regard to delta-v!
- qayxc 5y agoIt isn't worth collecting. This is Earth orbit, not the ocean or some strip of land. The debris zooms around the planet on all kinds of trajectories and it's immensely difficult to match velocity and direction in order to capture it. It's worse than trying to collect machine gun bullets mid-flight that were fired from a rotating carousel by a guy with shaking hands... Some parts, like spent second rocket stages, present some value because they could be reused as wet-workshops [1]. Material value alone, however, doesn't justify the cost of capture in most cases. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_workshop
- TulliusCicero 5y agoWould it be feasible with some near-future technology to have an autonomous space rover in orbit that goes around collecting space junk?
- lrem 5y ago3 major options are discussed in https://youtu.be/yS1ibDImAYU https://youtu.be/yS1ibDImAYU Edit: that's an 8 minutes Kurzgesagt video.
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- beefield 5y agoOne of my plans for my retirement days is to make a cubesat that uses a solar sail to gain momentum and then somehow give that momentum to space junk so that the junk falls down to atmosphere faster. Then use the sails again to increase the momentum of the space garbage collector for the next piece of garbage. Unfortunately this plan has still quite a few gaping holes in it.
- allendoerfer 5y agoSounds like a good plan to add some space junk in form of a cubesat with solar sails.
- cromulent 5y agoElsa-D is up there now running some tests. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Aerospace-Defense/Japan-s-Astroscale-launches-space-debris-removal-satellite https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Aerospace-Defense/Japan-s-A...
- nix23 5y agoNo not really, the massive stuff yes..maybe, but small stuff no. Just imagine the power you need to go on the same orbit and around the same speed just to pickup a fist sized trash piece, then you need energy again to slow it down so it can fall back to earth, or you take i with you (and that needs more energy too for you next trash pickup, because your mass got bigger). It's the old story: Oh we cut all the trees, time to invent a machine that can extract CO2 from the atmosphere.
- nuker 5y agoTime to raise the orbit to 2000 km.
- airhead969 5y agoHey, you're cheating with unlimited fuel.
- nickik 5y agoA lot of people ask what can be done. There is a lot. A huge part of why the ISS has to move because the uncertainty of the objects is to high. If we can get much more accurate measurements many of these issues become far less important. Currently its really just the us military who has radar for this. What we should have is multiple nations each having multiple radars. Beyond that, the next step is laser based ground station that can both get far more accurate measurements and potentially move the items as well. ESA is working on a demonstration of such a system. Again, it would be best if multiple nations had these. From these two tools we can create a real accurate shared global database with very accurate measure. This alone should massively reduce the amount of near collision events. Then beyond that we can start to launch missions to actually capture debris from higher orbits and throw make it burn up. ESA has also planned a demonstration mission for that. To really do that right we really want to have a reusable space transporter that can be refueled from some sort of cheap space fuel truck that can ride along on SpaceX flights. We can figure this out. Some DoD people have already talked about putting a price on individual objects so a commercial garbage removal market can start to happen. And with SpaceX Starship launch prices should get down to prices where these things can be done much cheaper. If you speak German this is a great resources: https://raumzeit-podcast.de/2020/11/17/rz092-weltraumschrott-bekaempfung/ https://raumzeit-podcast.de/2020/11/17/rz092-weltraumschrott...
- Someone 5y ago“and potentially move the items as well. ESA is working on a demonstration of such a system. Again, it would be best if multiple nations had these.” I fear the military would love to have that capability.
- nickik 5y agoWell, its not like you can pin-ball that stuff around. And if the sat is active it can easily counteract anything you can do with a laser. So I don't think there is much military value moving a sat incredibly slowly overtime. Its mostly useful to move dead objects.
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- sasaf5 5y ago>"The damage is limited to a small section of the arm boom and thermal blanket. Canadarm2 is continuing to conduct its planned operations."
- 7373737373 5y agoScary to think that we might have more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage in space
- redis_mlc 5y agoHopefully an object of a few tons will hit the ISS - deorbiting that piece of junk is long overdue. Maybe we can turn the ISS into a giant electromagnet and attract tons of space debris. For those who don't know the history of the ISS, the US entered into a joint venture with Russia in order to put unemployed Russian scientists on the dole instead of hiring out to Middle East dictatorships. I figure by now those Russian scientists can find their own damn paying jobs. Also, ISS experiments are not widely cited in papers - unlike real science experiments including Hubble, WMAP, etc.
- fsiefken 5y agoso, does this mean a spacewalk is on average more deadly then for example having COVID-19 or driving from Paris to Amsterdam?
- dominicl 5y agoWhat's the maximum traction that an electromagnet can cause? Is a thermonuclear powered super- in orbit thinkable? At least most human produced space garbage is magnetic I assume? So if we send multiple of those super magnets into orbit they would clean by slowly attracting small objects. So we reduce the problem from many tiny objects to a few larger easier to track electric dustballs. Anyone has some insight on why that does not work?
- snowwrestler 5y agoI would guess that most orbital debris is aluminum, titanium, paint, or some sort of plastic or plastic composite (e.g. epoxy/carbon fiber composite). Even a powerful magnet would not likely do much to attract these materials. For example, titanium medical implants are considered safe for MRI imaging, which uses a powerful magnetic field.
- jacquesm 5y ago> At least most human produced space garbage is magnetic I assume? You would assume wrong. Given that putting stuff into orbit is a battle with the rocket equation non-magnetic material should be expected because Iron and Iron containing alloys tend to be very heavy compared to similar structures in non-magnetic materials. Aluminum would be pretty common. Of course some of it will be magnetic but to assume that for the bulk will almost certainly be wrong.
- xvilka 5y agoWill something like X-37B be able to deorbit bigger chunks of the debris and collect smaller ones?
- acd 5y agoThere is a big BUG in marketing economics that we do not have a price for external Junk/Waste. This one organizations junk may be "free" to them, but cost another organization big amounts of work and hassle. Space junk is such an example. After you launch your satellite and it does it work and then becomes obsolete, there is very low to no incentive to remove the waste in a good manner. Nature usually works differently in that there is some kind of waste harvest process that recycles the waste into a renewable process.
- colechristensen 5y agoThese things are managed and approved, end of life is a consideration for approval for us related space launches.
- doctoboggan 5y agoThis bug is called “the tragedy of the commons” and people have been working on a hot fix for a while but I’m not sure it can be fully patched while running capitalism.
- bashinator 5y agoIt’s funny, sad, and telling that your post is not so popular on this particular forum. It certainly adds to the conversation, in my opinion.
- robocat 5y ago
- sandworm101 5y agoAnd where is the evidence that this is actually debris, space junk, and not rock or other "natural" material? NASA projects this idea that space is clean, that the only stuff in orbit is what we put there. That is simply incorrect. Literal tons of material falls onto earth from space each day. Virtually none of it is tracked. Calling any impact the result of "debris" requires some evidence or logic to explain the source. edit: 2019 paper listing over 1400 detected impact sites on ISS. https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2019paper/pdf/6001.pdf https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2...
- frederikvs 5y agoI don't think the term "space debris" is only applied to man-made space debris. Yes, there are rocks and other stuff out there, and those are just as dangerous as the man-made debris. AFAIK both types fall under the term space debris. Of course, the fact that there's more and more space debris is quite clearly linked to everything we launch.
- sandworm101 5y agoReally? I havent seen that math. For that to be true, the number of collisions would have to be rising faster than the rate at which we put stuff up there. Natural sources would cause a steady increase (more stuff launched, more exposed to natural impacts) whereas not-natural junk impacts should increase at a rate higher than exposure (compound increased exposure with increased risk from more objects). All i have seen are studies saying that the number of impacts is increasing, not that they are accellerating faster than launch rates.
- frederikvs 5y agoNo math is involved, only common sense : there's a certain amount of natural space debris surrounding planet earth. This amount has reached a steady state over the past few millions or billions of years. Over the past few decades we've started launching stuff into orbit. Some of that stuff explodes. Hence, there is now more debris surrounding planet earth. Whether or not the amount of extra space debris has already caused an increase in collisions is a different matter, for which some statistics would be required. But that wasn't the point I was making. In fact, it's quite the opposite of the point I was making : something has hit the ISS, and whether it's man-made or natural is (AFAIK) not specified at this time.
- kangnkodos 5y agoWe're approaching Kessler syndrome. A situation where cascading collisions make certain orbits unusable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
- aero-glide2 5y agoEveryone has probably heard that term dozens of times
- beezle 5y agoBottom line, it will take a death (or multiple) before countries even consider getting serious about this problem. Unfortunately, losing a bird would be bad and get headlines for a news cycle but that is 'just money'.
- boringg 5y agoI am curious on everyone perspective. I have seen a handful of launch start-ups trying to create lower cost launching to get into low-orbit. My concern is that by lowering the bar to entry we will be putting up lower quality products and also increase the magnitude of objects in orbit. I am conflicted because I also know that we will get more progress through lower-cost launches. It feels to me that it shouldn't be only considering launches but rather the entire lifecycle of the operation. The longer we wait the more irreversible damage is done it seems. Interested in agreement or counterpoints to expand my opinion.
- nickik 5y ago> I have seen a handful of launch start-ups trying to create lower cost launching to get into low-orbit. My concern is that by lowering the bar to entry we will be putting up lower quality products and also increase the magnitude of objects in orbit. Launch start-ups are the least of your concerns, SpaceX the most established provider is, they are lowering the price far more then any new startup. The start ups are actually very expensive in terms of cost to orbit. > It feels to me that it shouldn't be only considering launches but rather the entire lifecycle of the operation. They are, this is already regulated. If you launch something to get a license you have to show how your whole lifecycle will go. The problem that is left is about what to do when your sat fails and can not complete the lifecycle. As of yet there is no requirement to complete it in such a case. Such a requirement will come once we reliably demonstrate how to de-orbit dead object and there can be a price put on the service (and therefore instance will insure it).
- boringg 5y agoThanks for the information. Clearly it is still expensive to ship to low orbit - but as the costs come down more people will be able to get in. Your comments make me feel a bit better about it. I think my concern with VC funded start-ups is that they don't have funding to actually do full lifecycle if the company never makes it or if revenue never arrives. In which case the full lifecycle component doesn't really exist.
- tunesmith 5y agoAs each piece of space junk is added, does the probability of getting hit increase linearly? Or is it a curve? I ask because the press uses language like "ticking time bomb" which implies some sort of curve or vicious cycle or tipping point that will be hit. Is it that the collisions would in turn create more space junk, at a high enough rate that this would cause a true acceleration?
- mcguire 5y agoKessler syndrome is somewhat similar to a nuclear reaction (the math may be similar?): below a critical density, collisions are rare enough that orbital decay means that the chance of the next collision is ~0. Above that critical density, a collision produces multiple pieces of debris which are then involved in further collisions. The chance of a collision goes up exponentially and the only solution is not launching anything until decay has cleared the orbit.
- vmception 5y agoCall your senator and demand force field legislation now! Space Force Fields!