Space Trash: Earth’s Harsh Outer Environment

The space surrounding Earth is becoming a giant landfill… or shall we call it spacefill?  Space junk - also known as space trash or debris -   floats throughout our solar system at extraordinary speeds, most reaching 17,000-plus miles per hour.

In the past 50-plus years of space exploration,  we have generated a vast wasteland of junk in space.  Most of it is found in Earth’s orbit, and yet much of it has landed on Venus, Mars and the Moon.  Over 20 tons have come to rest on the Moon!

We have been placing trash in space since 1957 with the launch of the Sputnik-I satellite.  Today, there are over 4,000 satellites in Earth’s orbit. Combine that with tens of millions of other pieces of space debris and you have a potentially lethal environment for space explorers … and for anyone on Earth who may be in the path of a larger piece which falls to the surface.  Pieces range in size from a small flake of paint to a truck-size piece of equipment previously used in a space station.

We’ve only just begun to look to space for solutions to improve our living conditions on Earth and for possible colonization in the future.  NASA and other agencies are already looking at how we can clean up and manage the  growing space debris challenges, and though a few methods have been devised, none has materialized as yet.  In the meantime, space trash will continue to build and pose growing lethal dangers to our space explorers and those on Earth subjected to space debris falling back to Earth’s surface.

We pretty much all know that we live and thrive on Earth because Earth is protected by its atmosphere.  We are in a bubble, and the fact is we can only live inside a bubble that will protect us and nourish us.  Go beyond Earth’s bubble into space, and we find dangers floating about everywhere.

Human activity has been cluttering up Earth’s space environment since the first man-made satellite, Sputnik I, was launched into space in 1957.  In addition to satellites no longer in use which still zoom along in Earth’s orbit (the oldest of which is the US satellite Vanguard I – also the oldest piece of space junk), our extra-planetary trash composition includes tools, nuts and bolts and related hardware, shrapnel from explosions and collisions, flakes of paint projected from the impact of debris with the space shuttle, astronaut gloves, rocket parts, and refuse dumped into space by the shuttles and space stations.  Most of the space debris is very small, but travelling at speeds close to 20,000 miles per hour, they carry the potential impact of much more massive objects.

For example, a flake of paint travelling at 20,000 miles per hour carries the impact of a small bullet.  Such debris has caused damage to space station and shuttle windows which have had to be replaced in space.  An orange-sized mass of metal can carry the impact of a small bomb or 30 sticks of dynamite and a peanut-size mass can have the impact of a falling 500-pound boulder.

The United States Space Surveillance Network (SSN) has tracked more that 24,500 pieces of space debris larger than 10 centimeters (about 3.9 inches) in diameter, including satellites, orbiting Earth.  According to SSN, about seven per cent of the debris is made up of operational satellites and the rest is space junk.  Over 17,000 objects larger than 10 centimers are known and being tracked; however, the numbers of smaller objects are estimated in the tens of millions.

Just as human activity creates over two billion tons of municipal waste each year (Source: Bharat Book Bureau, 2006) most of which is deposited in landfills, we are likewise forming a blanket of trash around our planet.  As we continue to look to space as a means of commerce, research and development, agriculture and even human habitation, waste management will play as key a role there as it does on Earth’s surface.

While scientists are keenly aware of this and are working on solutions, the greater presence we maintain in space, like the growing population burden on Earth’s surface, will require increasingly diligent waste management systems.  Reducing, reusing and recycling are sure to be in the mix.