a 250kg stainless steel satellite fuel tank crashed near georgetown, tx in 1997
trashing to earth not so empty space by Kyle Mullin
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November 2012
sor and a former US Air Force orbital tracker, and asked him about the impact of orbital litter. Why do we need to further our research about space junk? What is the threat? The Earth’s orbit is a pretty unique environment, and we derive a lot of benefits from it. There are about a thousand active satellites currently in orbit around the Earth providing services like weather monitoring and forecasting, climate monitoring and science, TV, phone services, broadband Internet, navigation, and natural resource management. There’s also the science we get from satellites that are used to study the universe, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as the activities on the International Space Station. Finally, satellites and space-based applications play a big
role in many national security areas. The concern is that as more countries launch and operate satellites to take advantage of all these benefits, increased congestion might jeopardize the long-term sustainability of key parts of our orbit and our ability to get all these benefits in the future. What can the Space Sustainability Conference do to help combat this issue? The purpose of this conference is to discuss several elements of the long-term sustainability of space. Space debris is part of this, but we’re also asking questions like “How do we know what’s in orbit? How do we track all the debris?” We’ll also delve into law and policy topics, such as liability issues for accidents in space and national
PHOTOs: courtesy of nasa and the european space agency
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or a moment, forget the litter on the ground. We have a futuristic trash problem that’s reaching stratospheric heights. Space junk is clogging up our planet’s orbit, leaving the GPS, telecommunications, and weather forecasting technology that we take for granted at risk – not to mention the lives of astronauts. Bringing sustainability to our intergalactic environment is the focus of the 2012 Beijing Space Sustainability Conference, to be held from November 8-9 in Beijing. The event is organized by Beihang University, the International Space University, and American think tank Secure World Foundation (SWF). We recently met up with this year’s conference organizer Brian Weeden, who also happens to be the current SWF technical advi-