Time.news – In “Gravity”, the film with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney released in 2013, a Russian missile destroys a decommissioned satellite and the subsequent chain reaction creates a wave of debris that hits the Space Shuttle with tragic consequences.
Like so many science fiction films, too that of Alfonso Cuaròn did not take long to become reality or to approach it dangerously.
On November 15, 2021 it was the remains of a Soviet satellite destroyed by a Russian missile that endangered the International Space Station (Iss), forcing the crew to take refuge in two spacecraft should a collision force them to immediately return to Earth. An accident that, alone, could have increased the amount of cosmic debris orbiting the planet by 10%.
Last May, NASA counted 27,000 traceable fragments in orbit. The real danger, however, are the even more numerous debris of dimensions too small to allow monitoring but more than sufficient to create serious problems in the event of a collision with other objects, due to the very high speed with which they move, exceeding 27 thousand kilometers. so. Like the one that, last May, opened a 5 mm diameter hole in an ISS robotic arm.
The European Space Agency (ESA) for its part had estimated last November the presence in orbit of 36,500 artificial objects over 10 centimeters wide, one million between one and 10 centimeters and 330 million between one millimeter and one centimeter.
Episodes such as the near collision today between a Chinese satellite and Russian debris appear destined to occur more and more often. Along with cosmic junk, the number of satellites sent into space continues to grow.
At risk are therefore not only space missions but also fundamental infrastructures such as the GPS system or projects such as Starlink, the satellite constellation of Space X for broadband internet access. At the moment the total number of satellites circulating around the Earth is just under 5 thousand. Starlink alone has a medium-term target of 12,000 satellites which could, in the future, reach 40,000.
The US State Department has accused Moscow of wanting to use the debris as a weapon. The remains, however, do not check the nationality of those they strike. And they remain dangerous for years, again last November the ISS was forced to change the altitude of about a kilometer and a half to avoid what was left of a Chinese satellite destroyed in 2007.
After the November 15 incident, the Kremlin denied putting the ISS at risk. However, the military implications of similar operations do not escape anyone. In addition to Russia, the US, India and China also have technologies to destroy satellites in orbit. And missiles aimed at their old equipment could be fired at any time at those launched by other nations.
The tools that are being developed could also be used with offensive intent to resolve an increasingly difficult issue to ignore. One example is the systems, being studied by government agencies and private companies, to bring satellites back into the atmosphere causing them to disintegrate.
Another possible remedy is to build nets that catch debris. However, “spatial cleanliness” is still in its infancy, since the threat posed by orbiting garbage has, for a long time, simply been ignored.
The responsibilities are clear. According to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the foundation of international space law, every country remains the owner of every object launched into the cosmos even once it has been reduced to crumbs.
However, there is no system of sanctions that punish damage caused by debris and, above all, attributing a fragment to a specific country is very complicated, sometimes impossible, a real legal nightmare.
Creating less “cosmic junk” and trying to remove the existing one will require enormous effort, both in technical terms and in international cooperation. The only alternative, however, is an Earth’s orbit that is so full of debris that it can no longer be navigable.