The volume of garbage loose in Space does not stop increasing and, from time to time, it is necessary to “escape” from it. Let the ESA say that it has been called upon to intervene again to avoid a new collision with one of its observation satellites.
The situation is far from a first for both the “victim” and those who have to do the “dirty work”. The ESA team responsible for the control of space debris planned in advance an intervention maneuver to avoid the risk of collision of the CryoSat satellite with a piece of space debris again.
+ Space junk, a growing problem with no means to solve
The preventive maneuver took place last Thursday and consisted of moving the CryoSat to avoid colliding with a two-meter piece of a rocket, weighing around 200kg.
ESA assures that everything went as planned and that all the satellite analysis instruments responsible for monitoring the polar ice thickness were operational again.
Alongside the disclosure of the intervention maneuver, the European Space Agency took the opportunity to remember the “constant challenge” that its Space Debris Office has to face in the face of the increasing volume of space debris.
An infographic presents some current data, indicating that the 2,700 satellites in operation share their orbits with 8,800 tons of space junk, namely discarded rocket stages and other inactive satellites.
From Earth, around 26,000 objects with the size for this are monitored. It is then calculated, through statistical models, that there are around 34 thousand fragments with more than 10 cm, 900 thousand with between 1 cm and 10 cm and another 12 million fragments with 1 mm to 1 cm in size.
But it’s not just the ESA that has been doing various “fun stunts” to avoid the collision of space debris with its different observation instruments. The Chinese space station Tiangong announced a few months ago that it was forced to perform two evasive maneuvers during 2021 to avoid collision with satellites in the Starlink constellation.
In the complaint filed with the United Nations, it is mentioned that the satellites of the internet services of the Elon Musk company had two “immediate encounters” with the Chinese space station on July 1 and October 21, 2021, forcing security maneuvers to avoid collisions. However, according to Reuters, these complaints were not verified by independent entities and even SpaceX remained silent.
In addition to the increasing number of “space resources” launched, in total it is estimated that there are more than one million objects larger than one centimeter in size that orbit the Earth without control, particularly in low and geostationary orbits, capable of provoking potential damage of different nature.
Satellites are one of the biggest problems, due to the fact that their days are numbered since they leave for their space missions, since there is no way to repair them, in case of breakdown, or refuel them when they run out of fuel. ESA data points to the existence of 2,850 inoperative satellites, “lost” in space.
It is in this sense that solutions are being created to prolong the life of these systems, while at the same time contributing to fewer launches and cost and resource savings. The NASA project that involves sending robots into space capable of maintaining satellites is one example.
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