Space Junk Rivals Weapons as a Major Threat

Space Junk Rivals Weapons as a Major Threat
By Jeremy Hsu
SPACE.com Senior Writer
posted: 23 December 2010
11:44 am ET

What began as a minor trash problem in space has now developed into a full-blown threat.
A recent space security report put the problem of debris on equal footing with weapons as a threat to the future use of space.

Hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk — including broken satellites, discarded rocket stages and lost spacewalker tools — now crowd the corridors of Earth orbit.

These objects could do serious damage to working spacecraft if they were to hit them,
and might even pose a risk to people and property on the ground if they fall back to Earth and are large enough to survive re-entering the atmosphere....

Consideration of space debris as a major threat may cause the United States to take a more global view on the threat of space weapons, said Brian Weeden,
a former U.S. Air Force orbital analyst and now technical adviser for the Secure World Foundation, an organization dedicated to the sustainable use of space.

"This is an important realization, because before that much of the security focus was on threats from hostile actors in space," Weeden explained.
"This is the first [national policy] recognition that threats can come from the space environment and nonhostile events."

Even fictional space navigator Han Solo might prefer to risk turbolaser blasts from Imperial starships rather than hazard Earth's growing cloud of space debris,
where objects whiz by at up to 4.8 miles per second (7.8 km/s).

The possibility of a damaging collision between spacecraft and orbital junk only continues to grow with more functional and nonfunctional hardware flying above Earth.
Both the International Space Station and space shuttle missions have been forced to dodge space debris in the past.

More than 21,000 objects larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter are being tracked by the Department of Defense's U.S. Space Surveillance Network.
Estimates suggest there are more than 300,000 objects larger than 0.4 inches (1 cm), not including several million smaller pieces.

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