I have been writing about space debris in totally different (mainly academic) settings, and, considering how dangerous debris can be to working satellites and the ISS, it sounds strange to me that specialised press and people in the business don’t talk a lot about it.
It turns out, now that constellations of small satellites are being launched, the topic is given more attention, starting from this article from space.com. It relates that, on Oct. 30, NASA has submitted an official comment letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on this sensitive matter.
The communication is about AST & Science’s planned SpaceMobile network of 243 satellites about 450 miles (720 kilometres) above Earth’s surface, that could threaten the operation of already existing Earth-observing satellites. “NASA’s calculations suggest that gliding safely among the SpaceMobile satellites might require 1,500 “mitigation actions,” or spacecraft manoeuvres, and 15,000 “planning activities” per year for the A-Train’s handlers, Fonder wrote. That equates to about four maneuvres and 40 planning activities every day.” (Read the whole story here).
NASA doesn’t overstate it. The danger is real, and ESA (the European Space Agency) has devoted since long time an entire branch of its operations just to monitor space debris status.
Here’s is a recent overview:
For real-time information and updates,bookmark the official webpage.
That video is impressive – and worrisome: just yesterday I saw on Discovery Science a segment about astronauts on the ISS having to correct the station’s trajectory to avoid collisions, and of one instance in which the warning was late for such a correction and they had to move to the evacuation capsule just in case… 🙁
Yes, the ISS is often forced to make correction manoeuvres, and I worry with the growing debris in LEO, it will only get worse 🙁
Clearly the global audiences who watched Gravity thought it was all essentially fiction, but though the film took some liberties the danger from orbiting debris which it highlighted definitely can’t be minimised.
I definitely agree. Actually, I have avoided to mention the movie here for this reason —there’s a fictional element but the danger of major incidents is so real 🙁