An expert has raised concerns that space debris could pose a serious threat to humans, and even kill people on Earth before the end of this decade. With space debris becoming an increasing problem, researchers now say that Earth could soon get Saturn-like rings made out of junk left behind by space programs. While all countries with space programs are responsible for the drastic increase in space junk, Russia's actions especially have worsened the problem, as was emphasized by its notorious anti-satellite weapons test last year that's said to have generated thousands of pieces of orbital debris of varying sizes.
In an interview with Ars Technica, astrodynamicist Moriba Jah claimed space debris falling from the sky could be deadly. Jah, who works at the University of Texas at Austin and is one of the leading global experts on orbital debris, predicted that before long, "school-bus-sized objects" reentering Earth's atmosphere could withstand their fiery reentry and slam into populated areas, resulting in widespread death and destruction. Jah further claimed that space debris will also create problems for human space programs, with one of the millions of pieces of debris possibly hitting the rockets carrying human tourists or astronauts.
Space Debris Spiraling Out Of Control
In terms of how to mitigate the problem, Jah said that the situation will have to be addressed sooner rather than later to ensure that Earth stays out of harm's way. According to Jah, one of the best ways to address the uncontrolled increase in space junk is for countries to treat near-Earth orbital space as a finite resource and 'manage it holistically' by increasing coordination and planning between the various nations and their space programs.
Even if that's achieved someday, the existing space junk — and especially the debris from the Russian missile test — is already creating huge problems for SpaceX's Starlink satellites. According to Jah, the satellites have often been in the line of fire from Russian space junk, and have had to maneuver away from orbital debris "several thousand times" to avoid getting struck. Jah believes that Russia blew up the Cosmos 1408 satellite intentionally to interfere with the SpaceX satellites as part of its plans to flex its geopolitical muscles against American space programs.
Talking about SpaceX's Starlink program, Jah also expressed concerns about the increasing number of small satellites that are being put into low-Earth orbit by companies like SpaceX, with thousands more from Amazon (Project Kuiper) on the way. According to Jah, this is making the low-Earth orbit is even more cluttered with debris and increasing the chances of an accident substantially.
Expressing serious concerns about the future of the low-Earth orbit, Jah said "I think we are going to lose the ability to use certain orbits because the carrying capacity is going to get saturated by objects and junk." If that happens, that orbit highway will no longer be usable, hurting space programs and endangering human life.
Source: Ars Technica