More Money Needed to Avoid Collisions in Space, Experts Say
With satellite orbits becoming more crowded, and collisions more likely, lawmakers and space experts brain- stormed ideas to mitigate the dangers to spacecraft during a Wednesday House Aerospace Policy Briefing hosted by the Aerospace Industries Association. Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R- Mich.) said he hopes an international covenant can soon be adopted to address the issue. “I was horrified when people started to leave the space debris up there. It is way past time to blow the whistle on this,” he said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Hundreds of thousands of pieces of space debris pose a serious risk to the space industry. said AIA President Marion Blakey. The pieces, which are moving as fast as 17,000 miles per hour, range in size from a paint chip to an entire dead satellite, and are lethal enough to pierce the suit of an astronaut or destroy a space station, speakers at the briefing said.
In the next five years, as many as 10 collisions are expected to occur, said Andrew Palowitch, director of the U.S. Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office Space Protection Program. This past week alone, critical government payloads were narrowly missed by marble sized debris 14,000 times, said Paul Graziani, CEO of Analytical Graphics, a government software company. With more than 2,000 new satellites expected to join the 1,300 operational satellites already in orbit in the next 10 years, Palowitch said space is getting limited in “critical spots in the mid- earth and GEO orbits.”
Better tracking systems are needed to keep critical space missions intact, Graziani said. “We cannot track things smaller than a softball, only see them, and that’s a real problem,” he said. A wider monitoring scope is also needed because current sensors only monitor Earth’s northen hemisphere, he said.
To date, the government has invested $3.2 billion in sensing technology, with an additional $5 billion expected to be spent in the next five years, Palowitch said. He called the amount “a good start,” but said he had concerns whether the money would cover not only building new sensors but replacing old ones as well.
Researchers are perfecting a method to drag space debris into Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn up, Palowitch said. Before the process can be used more widely, he agreed with the Congressman that international partnerships would be needed to avoid getting into serious conflicts.
In the meantime, Palowitch said he’s grateful the commercial satellite industry is doing its part to avoid creating more space debris. He said Lockheed Martin and Boeing both have practices where satellites they build move into less-used orbits at the end of their life cycles, ensuring room for active satellites.