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More and more frequently, the public is made aware of satellites that could radically alter our night sky after they have already been launched. These satellites have disastrous effects on the field of astronomy, the life cycles of indigenous religious practices and our quality of life. In light of the recent launch of the massive AST SpaceMobile satellite, Blue Walker 3, it is helpful to understand the very few ways in which problems with satellites can be resolved. The consideration is more than urgent: Blue Walker 3 may eclipse Venus in the night sky. AST plans to have 110 of these satellites by 2024.
Expect
Nature already does some of the heavy lifting (pull?) when it comes to shooting down satellites. The energy exerted by the friction between the satellite and the thin layer of atmosphere in its orbit creates atmospheric drag, removing energy from the system. As energy must be conserved, the orbit decays and the satellite moves to a closer orbit around the earth. In this way, the earth will eventually recover all the satellites put into orbit, it is only a matter of time.
In some cases, this is exactly what satellite companies are betting on! This also means that often satellites are launched without a plan to recover or dispose of them, sometimes because companies go bankrupt during the mission. The European Space Agency (ESA) offers a “best practices” directive to mitigate this effect, but it is a suggestion— not a law. In fact, it wasn’t until earlier this week that Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel proposed the first rule requiring satellites to be de-orbited after five years, slated for a formal vote on May 29. september.
As a result, many companies fail to establish a recovery plan for their satellites. Instead, they rely on a number of self-destructing mechanics, some of which can create new problems. Depending on the distance from Earth, an orbiting satellite can take years, decades, or centuries to disintegrate. This, of course, assuming they don’t collide. In this case, the debris can take an unpredictable number of years to break down and act like a shower of bullets on nearby spacecraft for decades.
In other words, satellites that live for decades or even centuries will outlive those who launched them. At best, the shorter-lived ones crash to Earth or burn up in the atmosphere if they’re small enough. Some controlled landings end up in the “spacecraft graveyard,” a point in the ocean far from human life, while others are scattered across the land. Other times they will be removed to higher orbits above the earth in the graveyard orbit, which will instead take millions years to return to earth.
To catch
Where removal of spacecraft to a cemetery or cremation is not possible, other cleanup efforts have been proposed. This is especially crucial to avoid the Kessler effect – a runaway effect of broken satellites creating chain reactions of space junk that cannot be stopped once hit. This will eliminate all GPS, navigation, space internet, ISS and future space missions.
More than 4,800 bodies orbit the Earth, and several tens of thousands more are proposed. In an effort to pick up some of the debris, countries and private companies have taken up the challenge. The technology is varied and creative:
- Manual capture with robotics on board other satellites, such as ClearSpace-1 (scheduled for launch in 2025-26).
- A giant fishing rod, released by JAXA in 2014. Its giant electrodynamic space tether was supposed to attract and burn debris, but unfortunately the tether failed to deploy and the body became debris itself.
- Capture and dispose, like Astroscale’s commercial “space sweepers” with ESA by 2030. In that case, OneWeb satellites will still have fuel to return to Earth. In the event of a failure, the satellites are also equipped with grapple and magnetic capabilities so they can be retrieved by a service craft, known as “ELSA-M”, which is scheduled for launch in 2024.
- A harpoon. Literally a harpoon the size of a pen. This unique idea is designed to capture space junk and roll it up into a utility craft to be removed or dragged to a lower orbit to be burned. The tests have so far been conclusive by RemoveDEBRIS!
…as you can imagine, debris removal is extremely difficult to do and does not completely solve the problem. Meanwhile, the number of satellites and debris increases exponentially.
Merely Not
The more fail-safe way to avoid problems with satellites is to just not putting one up there in the first place. Yet, frustratingly, there is often very little notice of new satellite launches, such as the new Blue Walker 3, despite their potential for large-scale effects on astronomy, the night sky and the Earth itself. same.
Citizens have few options once big business makes private decisions that affect our lives. In the meantime, you can always write to your politicians, boycott companies that use satellite services, explore alternatives to such services like fiber optic cables, or boycott watches that communicate directly with satellites. In the United States, there is a $48 billion initiative to distribute Internet for All to the states, providing a significant opportunity to support fiber optic internet rather than connecting to satellites.
For readers in the scientific spheres looking for a job, I also encourage you to work for those cleaning companies you may not know about rather than the big companies you know about. Satellites must be seen as contributors to the planet’s growing problems, and their launches and subsequent cleanup must be approached with heavy responsibility.
Want to help the cause? There is a growing list of ways to help in this Previous AstroBite and thatsky and telescope article.
Astrobite edited by Michael Foley
Featured Image Credit: Nokia/AST Space Mobile vianewscientist
About Lindsay De Marchi
Lindsay DeMarchi is currently a graduate student at Northwestern University. She is obsessed with gravity and uses multi-messenger methods to analyze the final moments of stellar collapse.
#delete #satellite
