Space Pollution

The U.S. monitors over 12,000 pieces of space debris like dead satellites, exploded rockets, nuts, bolts and other pieces of space technology, including 32 defunct nuclear reactors totaling over a ton of radioactive fuel. All of this trash competes with more than 850 active satellites in low Earth orbit. A collision with a piece of space trash the size of a grape (1cm) can seriously damage or destroy a satellite, and a collision with a larger chunk of junk can explode a satellite causing large amounts of additional debris.

Collisions between defunct satellites and debris have been observed, and some mysterious breakups and explosions may have been due to collisions with debris too small to observe from Earth. In February of 2007, the ‘Breeze-M’ upper stage of a Russian Proton Rocket mysteriously exploded over Australia, littering space with more than a thousand pieces of junk. In the same month, a retired China-Brazil spacecraft mysteriously broke into dozens of pieces, possibly due to a collision with space debris.

Traffic in space is getting so congested that satellites must be periodically nudged in their orbits by remote control from Earth in order to avoid collisions with debris. More often, however, predictions are not accurate enough for any action to be taken by satellite operators. According to John Campbell, a VP of Iridium Satellite, "We grit our teeth and hold our breath; that’s our action." Even if no further space junk is put into space, the existing debris will break up in time and dangerously increase the amount of trash. A piece of space debris can have an orbital lifetime of days to hundreds of years depending on its size and altitude. There are currently no means to remove or mitigate space waste, though schemes for ‘space garbage ships’ are being studied. The costs for such programs are astronomical and, ultimately, would be paid for by taxpayers.