Science and Tech

Will space debris cause casualties in the next decade?

Will space debris cause casualties in the next decade?

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It was 1997 when Lottie Williams I was walking through a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her leisurely path was interrupted by a flash of light that suddenly appeared in the sky. Seconds later, she felt something hit her shoulder. As she will learn later, it was a piece of a disintegrating rocket, which will make Lottie the first and, so far, only person she has officially been hit by a piece of space junk.

However, the enormous increase in debris accumulated in Earth’s orbit could cause the list to grow in the coming years or even claim its first fatalities. as much as a ten percent chance that in the next decade there will be new cases of injuries.

It is true that in recent years a major effort has been made to avoid increasing debris in orbit: from reusable rockets to the planning of future missions to ‘clean’ the space, major agencies and private companies are looking for new ways to keep space debris at bay. Normally, the unusable parts are sent to a safe orbit (the so-called ‘graveyard orbit’, located between 660 and 800 kilometers from the earth’s surface).

However, many parts re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner and the debris can land anywhere. Fortunately, the great extension of the oceans has caused the majority of crashes to occur in areas with water; the problem lies in the exponential increase in launches in the last decade (for example, in 2021 all records were broken, with 1,400 new satellites in orbit).

Victim expectation

Considering this scenario and using satellite data from the last 30 years, Michael Byers and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, Canada, ran models to predict the ‘expectation of victims’ o the risk to human life as a result of uncontrolled rocket re-entries for the next decade, taking into account the potential danger to people on land, at sea (ships) or aircraft, and taking into account partially remaining rocket fragments intact.

As detailed in their study, published in Nature Astronomyfollowing standard practice, if a ‘typical’ rocket re-entry spreads debris over a ten square meter area, there is a 10% chance of re-entry. “one or more victims in the next decade”. In addition, it points to the populations of the southern hemisphere as the areas most likely to receive this dangerous space debris. “Rocket bodies are about three times more likely to land in the latitudes of Jakarta, Dhaka and Lagos than in those of New York, Beijing or Moscow”the authors point out.

However, the origin of the ‘uncontrolled’ rockets and, therefore, its responsibility for them, will be mainly the USA (71%), followed by China, the European Space Agency and Russia (although with a percentage).

much smaller tages), areas where these space debris are unlikely to crash.

The growing problem of space debris

«The work of Byers and collaborators raises a key aspect of sustainability applied to the use of space: the uncontrolled proliferation of launches poses a risk to the population of the Earth that cannot be ignored»Explain David Galadi-Enriquez, researcher in the Department of Astronomy of the Calar Alto Observatory and Coordinator of the ICOSAEDRO group (impact of satellite constellations on radio and optical detectors) of the Spanish Astronomy Society and member of the CB7 commission of the International Astronomical Union, to SCM.

“Low Earth orbit remains a ‘lawless city.’ Satellite congestion puts the observation of the sky at risk, which has put the entire world astronomical community on a war footing. But alarm bells have also been raised in the aerospace industry itself over the increased danger of collisions in space, which could ruin low orbit as an economic resource for decades, if not centuries.”.

Still, the authors think there is hope. “We already have the technology for controlled re-entries -they point-, but we lack the collective will to use them due to their high costs». For this reason, they advocate multilateral agreements to deal with the problem of space debris, or else “Space-traveling nations will continue to export these risks unnecessarily”.

Font: ABC

Reference article: https://www.abc.es/ciencia/increase-probability-space-trash-provoque-victimas-proxima-20220711183225-nt.html

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