Space Debris

Where the World Wars and commercialization allowed aviation to develop from the Wrights’ simple aircraft, to large commercial plane, to extremely complex military aircraft. Today, reorganized to form NASA, its main goal is the advancement of space technology and the human exploration of space. Using the private companies to commercialize low-orbit travel and the development of better rocketry, NASA can focus on deep exploration. NASA believes that commercialization is not only a method to be cost effective, but help raise the number of crew aboard the ISS, provide new economic frontiers in space travel, and brings the frontier to civilians. In the near future, with the aid of space commercialization and NASA research, astronauts and spacecraft will become independent of Earth. Meaning, that astronauts and spacecraft will no longer need to reenter Earth’s orbit for resupplies, but are able to self-sustain their systems. This will enable humanity to push further into the depths of space, beyond the asteroid belt or even

Neil Armstrong 's 1969 lunar landing was one of humanity 's greatest accomplishments. Since then, we have found that an infinite supply of knowledge and resources await us just outside our atmosphere. Today, however, critics are beginning to argue more and more that the cost of space exploration is too high, and therefore new technological developments should be left to the private sector. Whether funded privately or by the government, funding of space exploration is imperative because NASA is essentially the only agency with the technological capabilities to support aircraft manufacturing, air safety and air transportation. Space exploration has also resulted in remarkable innovations that has played a key role in aeronautics research, preventative medicine, and allows scientists to study asteroids, along with other space debris and their impacts on Earth.

The American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics is an organization for the protection of governmental space programs and the use of aerospace science and engineering. They function as an interest group, influencing the government to pass laws and put policies in place that benefit their needs. Their mission is “to inspire and advance the future of aerospace for the benefit of humanity, to address the professional needs and interests of the past, current, and future aerospace workforce and to advance the state of aerospace science, engineering, technology, operations, and policy to benefit our global society”. The AIAA’s members support many different space-related programs and causes, including strategic missile defense programs,

The United States of America relies heavily on its ability to operate in the most contested and most undetermined domain, space. The space domain is one of the newest domains that the United States finds itself contending in, desperate to combat the unknown or unforeseen. The battle ground is the contentious and hugely unknown areas that float above the heavens. The soldiers the best and brightest engineers and physicists that the world has ever known. The front lines are the exponentially long math equations that produce precise launch equations that place objects in orbit around our Earth. Those objects are satellites and their functions are as numerous as the varieties of their uses multiplied by the nations that own them. They control everything from the precise time that is printed on your Starbucks receipt to the exact location that a Tomahawk cruise missile destroys its target. Space based technology is interwoven throughout our government, the military, the U.S. economy, but it’s also provides a level of peace and security to the American people. Even though the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 strictly prohibits the militarization of space, the U.S. Department of Defense has a strategic obligation to protect the U.S. Space Program from its near peer adversaries because of the impacts on the global economy and to the security of United States citizens.

From the origins of rocketry, the only major contenders in space exploration were governmental agencies, while the commercial use of the Universe was limited to communication satellites. However, everything is changing. Modern developments like reusable rockets and nano-satellites drastically lower the cost of accessing space, starting the new Space Race. This Race, unlike the previous one, is accessible for all of us - and I’m going to share it in my Paideia class.

Today, speeding past our Earth ten times faster than a bullet (tweentribune), are millions of pieces of space junk ranging in size from flecks of paint to entire Satellites (NASA). To most people this does not sound like much of a problem, but even a fleck of paint moving 17,500 miles per hour or more can cause significant damage to spacecraft and space walkers alike. As more collisions take place and as new items enter the atmosphere the statistical probability of a collision will increase. Eventually, the probability of a collision will become so high that it will be unsafe to enter space from Earth (NASA). Now, as discussion of colonizing Mars intensifies, space junk has a new way of spreading and clogging up more of the universe. When humans colonize Mars they will

Without the proper mitigation techniques, space travel could have more space-junk-related mishaps as time goes on. Luckily, the agencies responsible for most of the world’s spacecraft are already working to prevent any exponential growth of space junk, and until then, procedures are in place to prevent any catastrophic accident from occurring. As the years progress, space junk will evolve from a connotation of fear with the misinformed and annoyance with those knowledgeable, to a relic of the past, dealt with as regularly as

There has been a lot of talking about the increasing problem of space debri because of the amount of trash that we globally have thrown into space each year. People don’t know that having so much junk out there in the atmosphere is dangerous for satellites, future space launches, therefore there should be someway to fix this problem. Globally we need to work together on the unresolved issue of space junk.

The Kessler Syndrome was brought to light in 2009 when the Iridium 33, a United States satellite, was struck by the Cosmos 2251, an unused Russian satellite. Due to Kepler’s laws of orbital motion and the objects being as close they were to Earth’s gravitational pull, the two satellites collided at about five miles per second (Parker, greeniacs.com). The result of the collision proves Kessler’s concerns, as a cloud of thousands of pieces of broken equipment and satellite parts was created, which is now in Earth’s orbit. The true danger of space debris relies in the speed of each piece. Since each piece travels at around four to five miles per second, smaller pieces could be catastrophic towards future missions (Dunbar, nasa.gov). One such case of debris causing damage comes through the missions STS-50 to STS-114. Over the span of these 54 missions, debris and meteoroids hit the windows of the shuttles about 1600 times, resulting in 92 replacements (Madrigal, wired.com). The shuttles’ radiators have also been hit a number of times, leaving holes in the facesheet. One instance in particular occurred when a 100 micron sized particle hit the window of the STS-50, causing a one millimeter crater (Whitlock, nasa.gov). These instances show how dangerous even the smallest particles can be for spacecraft.

Orbital debris, which are different than space debri, pose a threat to space missions and astronauts. Manny previous missions have left orbital debris in their wake. Most of the debris are left up there until they are pulled toward earth by gravity and then destroyed by earth 's atmosphere. Until then the space junk is left to orbit around the earth. The amount of debri continues to grow quicker than the earth can destroy it. Leaving the debri to sit up there unchecked poses dangers for astronauts and space missions both current and future. There are several solutions that scientists have come up with that could help reduce the danger of space debris.

Abstract: Many people think that going to the outer space is not that complex when talking about the materials of a rocket or space shuttle. Most people believe that metal is all that is needed and that in fact that is all it has. The truth is that it required a lot of research and procedures to come up with the right materials to people to withstand rigorous conditions. In other words, materials had to be engineered to work with extreme heat, cold and pressure changes. Due to some other issues such as collision from debris and unforeseen events the space shuttle had to be cancelled. The risks were too high even with all the engineering of materials.

Thus, what we commonly refer to as orbital debris is the man-made debris. Technically, it is defined as any space object made by human beings, which previously orbits around the Earth and is currently out of function. The sizes of space debris can also vary from the size of a marble to a much greater size. Thus, besides the currently observed space debris, there are actually also another millions of space debris which are so tiny that we cannot keep track of them. However, even though some space debris is extremely small, their potential power can never be underestimated. Travelling at such a high speed, they can cause serious damages to any spacecraft. According to the past journals of various space shuttles, their windows have been continuously damaged and forced to be replaced simply due to the collision from unknown space debris. Just as what Nicholas Johnson, a NASA chief scientist for orbital debris, once suggests, the space debris which cannot be tracked creates the largest risk to space missions.

Due to the large number of space exploration projects, a large belt of debris has formed that can be hazardous to other operational spacecraft. As engineers, we have an ethical responsibility to prevent pollution of Earth’s atmosphere. We have learned a hard lesson on the value of environment from right here on Earth. Trends show that the debris belt circling the Earth will only get bigger, and become more hazardous to spacecraft.

Space debris are a major danger to the astronauts in space. According to an article by Sarah Benton Feitlinger, “In 2011 and 2012 the resident ISS astronauts had to take refuge inside the two Soyuz escape space capsules and be ready to leave, thanks to large pieces of debris that appeared to be heading their way. One missed the ISS by just 360 yards while the other zipped past at a distance of nine miles.” That is a little too close for comfort! An article by

Outer space is mankind’s common heritage, so all the countries must have equal access to the outer space. In the past few decades science and technology have freed from the boundaries of earth and making its way in to space.