Ugly Truth of Space Junk: Orbital Debris Problem to Triple by 2030

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Dealing with the decades of detritus from using outer space — human-made orbital debris — is a global concern, but some experts are now questioning the feasibility of the wide range of “solutions” sketched out to grapple with high-speed space litter.

What may be shaping up is an “abandon in place” posture for certain orbital altitudes — an outlook that flags the messy message resulting from countless bits of orbital refuse.

 The traffic is increasing. We’ve now got over 50 nations that are participants in the space environment,” Shelton said last month during the Space Foundation’s 27th National Space Symposium. Given existing space situational awareness capabilities, over 20,000 objects are now tracked. [Worst Space Debris Events of All Time]

“We catalog those routinely and keep track of them. That number is projected to triple by 2030, and much of that is improved sensors, but some of that is increased traffic,” Shelton said. “Then if you think about it, there are probably 10 times more objects in space than we’re able to track with our sensor capability today. Those objects are untrackable … yet they are lethal to our space systems — to military space systems, civil space systems, commercial — no one’s immune from the threats that are on orbit today, just due to the traffic in space.”

Tough neighborhood

From a probability point of view, General Shelton added, smaller satellites, more debris, more debris is going to run into more debris, creating more debris. [Video: Fragmentation: Growing Threat of Space Junk]

“It may be a pretty tough neighborhood,” Shelton continued, in low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous Earth orbit “in the not too distant future.”

When asked if the U.S. Air Force plans on funding space debris mitigation capability, Shelton responded: “We haven’t found a way yet that is affordable and gives us any hope for mitigating space debris. The best we can do, we believe, is to minimize debris as we go forward with our operations. As we think about how we launch things, as we deploy satellites, minimizing debris is absolutely essential and we’re trying to convince other nations of that imperative as well.”

Shelton said that, unfortunately, with the duration of most things on orbit, “you get to live with the debris problem for many, many years and in some cases decades. So minimizing debris is important to us and it should be to other nations as well.”

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