Space junk targeted for cleanup mission was hit by different space junk, making more space junk
- Reference: 1692768710
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/08/23/space_debris_targeted_for_groundbreaking/
- Source link:
The 112kg rocket part – named VEga Secondary Payload Adapter (VESPA) – was left in space after the 2013 launch of an Arianespace Vega rocket. In its past life as a payload adapter, it helped to deliver the Proba-V, VNREDSat-1 and ESTCube-1 satellites into space from ESA's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Now it resides, fragmented, in its low Earth orbit of 660km altitude perigee, 790km apogee and 98.7 degree inclination, according to the [1]ESA .
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The newly splintered parts of VESPA were detected by the United States 18th Space Defense Squadron, which oversees the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN) – an outfit that detects, tracks and catalogs objects humans have put in space.
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ESA said the fragmentation was "most likely" caused by the "hypervelocity impact of a small, untracked object." The space org said the fragments aren't likely to pose a collision risk to other missions. Probably didn't think this collision was likely either.
Preliminary investigations indicate that "the main object remains intact and has experienced no significant alteration to its orbit."
[5]Astroscale wants to be the world's friendly neighborhood space garbage collector
[6]FCC floats 'five-year rule' for hoovering up space junk
[7]India takes second punt at soft lunar landing with launch of Chandrayaan-3 mission
[8]Budget satellite drag sail shows space junk how to gracefully exit orbit
All this is good news, because the ESA's ClearSpace-1 mission was [9]scheduled to remove VESPA in 2026. ClearSpace-1 was planned to be the "first-ever mission to remove an existing derelict object from orbit through highly precise, complex, close proximity operations, all in the name of cleaning up space."
The technology demonstration is planned as the first step before more complex commercial and private missions can be put in the works.
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The ESA signed a $126 million contract with Swiss startup ClearSpace SA to launch ClearSpace-1. The plan is to rendezvous with VESPA, capture it using four robotic tentacles, then pull it back towards Earth so the pair would burn up on reentry.
A visualization of the mission can be seen in the video below:
[11]Youtube Video
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So far, ESA says ClearSpace-1 will continue as planned but the org, alongside industry partners, is evaluating the event's impact.
"Stay tuned during ESA's analysis in progress," [13]tweeted the Swiss startup on Tuesday in response to the news.
In the meantime, the ESA may have found a silver lining to the unfortunate event – it highlights the relevance of this type of work.
"The most significant threat posed by larger objects of space debris is that they fragment into clouds of smaller objects that can each cause significant damage to active satellites," said the ESA. "To minimize the number of fragmentation events, we must urgently reduce the creation of new space debris and begin actively mitigating the impact of existing objects."
The SSN is currently tracking tracking more than 27,000 pieces of space trash. According to [14]NASA . "Much more debris – too small to be tracked, but large enough to threaten human spaceflight and robotic missions – exists in the near-Earth space environment."
Although once upon a time it was socially acceptable to leave an errant spacecraft floating about for up to 25 years, efforts are [15]underway to require space operators to clean up after themselves in a more timely five years.
Those efforts coincide with a [16]sharp increase in the number of items hurtled into space as systems such as SpaceX's Starlink continue to grow.
In July, Starlink devices [17]reportedly comprised over half of all active satellites. ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Objects_detected_in_the_vicinity_of_ClearSpace-1_debris_removal_mission_target
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZOXYxKjwH@vj9SQDbkOJKwAAAco&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZOXYxKjwH@vj9SQDbkOJKwAAAco&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZOXYxKjwH@vj9SQDbkOJKwAAAco&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/16/space_junk_wef_astroscale/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/09/fcc_space_junk/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/14/india_chandrayaan_3_en_route/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/22/student_satellite_sail_project/
[9] https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/ClearSpace-1
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZOXYxKjwH@vj9SQDbkOJKwAAAco&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://youtu.be/il5cvSzYMfEhttps://youtu.be/il5cvSzYMfE
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZOXYxKjwH@vj9SQDbkOJKwAAAco&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://twitter.com/ClearSpaceToday/status/1694007760856203298
[14] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/09/fcc_space_junk/
[16] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space
[17] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/28/business/starlink.html
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Space trash
One wonders how many more years before the junk stops mankind from leaving earth to live on other planets ?
Re: the junk stops mankind from leaving earth
[1]Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out
"But then, of course, it was too late
The garbage reached across the state
From New York to the Golden Gate
And there, in the garbage she did hate
Poor Sarah met an awful fate"
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jxTy6RiyPY
Re: Space trash
All living organisms dump their trash without thought of consequences (most of course don't have the capacity to think about it anyway). But humans are the only organisms that dump non-biodegradable trash without thought. As we've changed the nature of the trash, maybe we should start to think about the consequences as well -- we are equipped to do so, we just haven't bothered to. And it's not a new problem -- the majority of interesting archaeology is based on analysis of ancient rubbish tips. But the big problems we now face are the sheer volume and durability of the junk we now produce.
Re: Space trash
"But humans are the only organisms that dump non-biodegradable trash without thought."
Ever visited the White Cliffs of Dover?
Ever hold a lump of amber?
Are you familiar with stromatolites?
Many birds and reptiles excrete salt.
Etc. etc. etc.
Re: Space trash
All living organisms dump their trash without thought of consequences
Can you teach that to my cat who's one thumb away from calling his mates to stand around in a circle in high-vis jackets to admire the perfectly filled-in and odour-free hole he buries his poo in
Re: Space trash
Sadly, it is the consumer based society, that wants better, larger, sometimes cheaper, mostly more expensive products and the corporations who know they can make money by making production life cycles far shorter than the actual longevity of the device itself.
And of course the corporations love this as the new "shiny" creates a false market and brand followers will be desperate to buy the new product and will ditch the perfectly acceptable and still working old version.
Many companies change product ranges almost every year and these policies should be curtailed. Certain car companies do this every year, and many consumer electronics firms have followed the same path. :-(
And all of these new versions require new packaging, new manuals, more advertising, and many older products end up as landfill if they are broken or have no resale value.
Some areas might have recycling facilities, but as has been documented, too many people try to recycle and there isn't the infrastructure to deal with it all...for instance, leading some UK councils exporting their waste to foreign countries by the container load.
It is certainly time us humans got our act together and instead of contaminating this planet, with all our waste, we individually all take personal responsibility to preserve it, in our own small way.
"Preliminary investigations indicate that "the main object remains intact and has experienced no significant alteration to its orbit." "
...
"The newly splintered parts of VESPA were detected"
Seems like a very wide interpretation of "remains intact" if there are multiple parts that broke off which are big enough to be individually detected. I am by no way a materials expert, but AFAIK most of the material parts of rockets are metals or composites, both of which are brittle especially at cold temperatures. Therefore there is a higher probability even when being impacted by a much smaller object to not be perforated / punctured, but to shatter (or for any perforation to be accompanied by cracks in the structure making it far more prone to shatter when any subsequent force is applied).
Materials that are more plastic in their behaviour would not suffer from this so much, but then presumably would be less suitable to withstand the forces sustained during launch. No easy answers it seems, but it's good that actual rocket scientists are looking into the space junk problem, because it's only going to get bigger.
about time someone put space litterer musktwat in jail just for that shit , never mind all the lies and fraud
Space trash
Humanity, as a whole, has a tendancy of not caring if it doesn't seem to matter. The only problem with that attitude, is that we often cannot see how it matters before it is too late, or at least much more expensive to correct.
That is why we are choking the sea with plastics coming from bags that have been carelessly thrown out a car window, or left on the beach because the trash can was five meters too far away.
In space, it has been the same thing. The entire space industry has, since the beginning, operated on a it-doesn't-matter attitude. Leftover rocket booster lounging around at 600+ kilometers ? Doesn't matter, it'll end up coming down.
Except that, since the decades we have been throwing stuff up there (and given the cost, with pretty good reason, generally speaking), all those remaining objects are now starting to clutter up Earth's orbital space and becoming, if not yet a danger, a clear nuisance.
All of that because of our human reflex. Like the smoker who just chucks his cigarette butt instead of putting it in the trash bin.
We will end up paying for that as well, in time.