2023-04-08 22:28:13
The fragments (small but dangerous) are billions, there is a risk of accidents with serious consequences on the economy: an international treaty is needed. The warning of «Science»
After the High Seas Treaty just won by the United Nations to protect its future the time has come to seriously address the possibility of a similar agreement between nations to safeguard space as well around the globe, our cosmic home. Learning from the mistakes made in the oceans left without rules and in the throes of free exploitation, even transforming them into gigantic waste bins with floating plastic islands. He had forgotten that life on the planet largely depends on the blue expanses. The same is true for nearby space, beyond the sky. We are entering a critical phase as many facts indicate and concrete actions are needed to prevent the worst. The American scientific journal Science has just issued a serious warning by collecting the motivations of several experts. Furthermore, at the beginning of March, NASA released a report analyzing the costs and benefits of finding remedies for the scourge of waste in orbit. The investigation was born under the pressure of a now evident emergency linked to an increasingly intense crowding that obscures the potential damages from which the economies of the various nations could soon suffer.
There are now numerous terrestrial activities dependent on space and both large and small countries that have just entered the game would be affected to support their growth with new technologies. In orbit there are almost ten thousand satellites which will become 60 thousand in 2030 according to the most moderate forecasts. Of the current ones, three thousand are no longer in operation and are wandering out of control, subject to potential clashes. The surveys of space agencies and military defense networks today register about 40,000 pieces of wreckage greater than ten centimetres. But the most disturbing are the tiny fragments evaluated with algorithms because they are invisible to radar: their estimate reaches one hundred trillion (billions of billions). All travel at a speed of 27 thousand kilometers per hour with a disruptive destructive energy. Even a microscopic particle of paint becomes a serious danger for satellites and astronauts aboard spacecraft and space stations.
The ISS shifted its location on average twice a year to avoid colliding with stray objects. Last month he had to perform the operation twice within a week and we are only at the beginning of the year.
Satellites hit and gone out of order have been recorded since the 1990s, periodically raising the issue without producing effects. Now the landscape is changing rapidly since Elon Musk started building his constellation of Starlink satellites and after the first four thousand already launched it should continue up to 40 thousand. Other individuals or nations are setting up similar constellations. A collision between two objects causes other fragments generating a Kessler effect, so named by the American astronomer who calculated it, triggering a destructive chain reaction. In 2002, a committee formed by space agencies to mitigate the problem suggested guidelines in the construction of satellites and rockets so that they did not leave any pieces in circulation. Military interventions also aggravated the situation. Major powers have demonstrated the ability to destroy a satellite by firing at a missile. In November 2021, on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians, to send a signal, crumbled their old Kosmos 1404 satellite, spreading over 1,500 fragments in one fell swoop. Now there is the little-considered proposal by the United States to ban such experiments. Meanwhile, the lines of the committee of twenty years ago, with a few exceptions, have remained a dead letter and there are only a few plans for cleaning up.
In 1957, the United Nations had launched a treaty that regulated activities in the cosmos. But we were at the beginning of the space age and today’s reality could not even remotely be imagined. Recent initiatives launched at the UN building have not produced results, hampered by national interests. However, the space around the Earth is a common good and every country has the right to use it for the development of its economy, security and science. So only a treaty similar to the one reached for the oceans will be able to offer guarantees of general protection favoring coordinated national legislative initiatives avoiding a cosmic wild west harmful to all.
April 7, 2023 (change April 8, 2023 | 22:28)
© Time.News
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