There's a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing

There’s a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-satellitesa-speeding-mass-of... There’s a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing Into Things A growing band of debris and tiny satellites imperils the Hubble Space Telescope and equipment used for phones, national security and weather forecasting By Robert Lee Hotz arlier this year, a single rocket launched from India flung 104 small Esatellites into space. A second Indian effort in June put another 30 into orbit, each roughly the size of a coffee can. In July, a Russian rocket scattered 72 more satellites around Earth, like pebbles strewn from a speeding car. These swarms of small satellites—hard to track and hard to dodge—increase the risk of collision for the world’s vital communication, navigation and defense satellites. Within a few years there might be another 20,000 or so small craft launched into a narrow band of space around Earth, more than 10 times the number of all working satellites in orbit today. The growth is spurred by advances in miniaturization, low-cost electronics and rocketry. Companies, space agencies, universities and even elementary-school students are jockeying for position. The traffic jam heightens the hazards of junk encircling Earth. The U.S. Air Force tracks 23,000 objects in orbit the size of a baseball or larger—most of it derelict rocket parts, decommissioned spacecraft or wreckage. Aerospace experts said there may be millions more hazardous splinters too small to 1 of 9 9/12/17, 5:32 PM There’s a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-satellitesa-speeding-mass-of... track. At risk are the international space station, the Hubble Space Telescope and hundreds of satellites used for communications, national security, weather forecasting and navigation. The Satellite Industry Association estimates that about $127 billion in annual revenue from satellite services is vulnerable. Traveling at orbital speeds up to 17,000 miles an hour, even an aluminum pellet 1-centimeter wide packs the kinetic equivalent of a 400-pound safe moving at 60 miles an hour. Last year, a scrap barely bigger than a grain of salt blew a hole in the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 1-B satellite, knocking off five pieces that narrowly missed a nearby satellite. In June, something jolted the AMC9 telecommunications satellite, owned by Luxembourg-based SES, disrupting data and broadcast services over the U.S. and Mexico. “This is the first time this has happened to us,” said Markus Payer, vice president for corporate communications at SES, which operates 65 satellites. Company engineers re-established control of the crippled craft and hope to park it in a “graveyard” orbit where it won’t threaten other spacecraft. The incident is costing SES about $23 million in lost revenues this year and another $44 million in the value of the spacecraft itself. Unchecked, the growing debris in orbit “might make some regions of space unusable in the future, and that would impact everybody—everybody who uses a mobile phone, who gets television, who relies on weather forecasts,” said Holger Krag, head of the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office. Satellite operations generally are governed by a patchwork of voluntary guidelines, treaties, domestic policies and laws designed for an earlier era of spaceflight. In the U.S., responsibility is spread over several federal agencies. Among other issues, European space officials and aerospace executives worry that customary practices guiding the distance between satellites or 2 of 9 9/12/17, 5:32 PM There’s a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-satellitesa-speeding-mass-of... how quickly they should be removed from orbit when missions are done aren’t adequate and are often ignored. “International treaties on space were developed 30 years ago, and they weren’t considering the types of constellations and uses of space we are seeing in the near future,” said Greg Wyler, CEO of OneWeb, which starting in April plans to launch a $2 billion constellation of 882 small satellites for broadband internet services. “There needs to be an update of those rules.” Access to space has never been easier, due to the innovations of small satellites that range from the size of a washing machine to as small as a poker chip, compared with more traditional satellites that are often taller than a double-decker bus and weigh several tons. The most popular type is called a CubeSat, which is based on a student- created standardized design and typically costs a fraction of larger systems— as little as $40,000 each compared with an average of $97 million or so for larger, custom-built satellites. At their simplest, CubeSats are 4-inch cubes that can be stacked like Legos into various configurations. “CubeSats are so appealing because they are a kit, essentially,” said aerospace industry analyst Carissa Bryce Christensen, CEO of the consulting firm Bryce Space & Technology in Alexandria, Va. “You are not having to design everything yourself.” Each tiny spacecraft is built to perform a single dedicated task, such as gathering weather data, tracking aircraft, monitoring factory activity or conducting science experiments that require low gravity. Experimental networks of these small satellites can also coordinate their actions, respond to events and collect data autonomously across a broad area. They usually hitchhike into low orbit—200 to 1,200 miles above the Earth’s surface—on rockets launched by space agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and private companies, such as SpaceX, that have spare room. They are often stacked on racks to be deployed from the international space station, like shells ejected from a pump-action shotgun. NanoRacks LLC, a leading launcher of CubeSats, 3 of 9 9/12/17, 5:32 PM There’s a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-satellitesa-speeding-mass-of... A 'Uwe 3' small satellite in a testing laboratory at Wuerzburg University in Germany; a Sprite spacecraft at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. PHOTOS: DAVID EBENER/DPA/ZUMA PRESS; BRETT CARLSEN FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL based in Webster, Texas, has deployed 182 CubeSats from the space station. Other relatively compact satellites, each weighing a few hundred pounds, are also proliferating. In the next five years 11 aerospace companies plan orbital networks encompassing 18,000 small communications satellites, according to federal filings, representing about $175 billion worth of satellite manufacturing and launch services. More launches are expected from universities and researchers. “We never expected the market to grow so quickly,” said NanoRacks CEO Jeffrey Manber. His company is now exploring ways to use 3-D printing technology and robotics to manufacture CubeSats in orbit. So is the European Space Agency. At least 35 companies are working on new launch systems to speed CubeSats into space, according to the Paris-based marketing research company Euroconsult Group. Some aerospace experts are concerned that, despite their advantages, CubeSats may be little more than rocks in space. They too often malfunction, are too small to track easily and usually have no propulsion system to allow them to steer clear of other spacecraft, critics said. 4 of 9 9/12/17, 5:32 PM There’s a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-satellitesa-speeding-mass-of... Generally, a CubeSat maintains the speed and orbit of the rocket that released it. At lower altitudes, small amounts of wind and resistance can push the devices off course. (At very high altitudes, well beyond the reach of the atmosphere, a satellite might stay on the same course for thousands of years.) The lack of maneuverability makes CubeSats a “huge problem,” said aerospace engineering professor John Crassidis at the University of Buffalo Nanosatellite Laboratory. Out of more than 244 CubeSats and other small satellites launched from 2000 through 2015, only one in four completed its mission, according to a recent survey by Michael Swartwout of Saint Louis University. Nearly a third of them were dead on arrival in orbit. This summer, nine CubeSats belonging to commercial and university teams malfunctioned in orbit and now don’t respond to commands. Many proponents of CubeSats said their tiny spacecraft orbit at such low altitudes that they clean up after themselves by harmlessly burning up in the atmosphere within a few months or years. As a satellite slows, it drops lower and lower, encountering stronger headwinds that create greater friction and heat, until it finally catches fire or vaporizes. The largest commercial network of small satellites currently belongs to Planet, an imaging company based in San Francisco, which operates a fleet of 185 CubeSats and five other satellites and plans to launch six more CubeSats in October. Planet said it relies on the natural tendency of a satellite to burn up in the atmosphere to dispose of spacecraft that have outlived their usefulness. Among this summer’s missing CubeSats is one deployed by Planet in July. It never reached its intended orbit and so far can’t be located. The company said it was gathering information to find out what happened. About a third of the satellites in low Earth orbit don’t drop out of space as 5 of 9 9/12/17, 5:32 PM There’s a Speeding Mass of Space Junk Orbiting Earth, Smashing ... https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-need-satellitesa-speeding-mass-of... expected when their mission is done, an international space debris working group reported earlier this year.

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