The European Space Agency or ESA is warning the public that Space Debris caused by residue from dilapidated satellites and rocket launches is slowly filling up the space above Earth. According to the ESA, they are tracking 1,100 functioning objects orbiting the Earth and 750,000 small particles, often referred to as space debris -- all traveling at 20,000 mph, making them high-speed projectiles.
How can space debris affect modern society?
As these objects orbit the Earth in speeds up to 20,000 mph, any object that it smashes into will be completely destroyed.
ESA compares the energy stored in these high-speed objects to resemble a grenade explosion upon impact. This causes major concern for countries sending off new satellites into space as the swarm of fast moving debris can easily wreck millions of dollars worth of equipment.
What are the measures that can be taken to solve this problem?
At the moment, there are no exact solutions to solve the growing volume of debris in space. Various proposals have been placed on the table, such as manual recovery of debris by capturing them in nets, but no exact methods has been developed. Because of this, the ESA continues to remind countries planning to send satellites into orbit to place 25 year limits on their equipment, after which, it should be pushed away from Earth or have it fall into the atmosphere to have it incinerated.
However, the only thing the ESA can do is to religiously monitor each piece of debris that floats in near-Earth space like air traffic control. the ESA tracks the debris with radar and alerts space agencies if an object will hit a satellite or not.
No one is actually doing anything about it
No country is spearheading an initiative to rid space of man-made debris.
Because of this, the ESA is preaching to no one and this frustrates them the most. They say that this problem is a global problem as it affects every nation on Earth and should also merit a global response and a global answer. It is only when people come together that any problem of this magnitude can be solved.
The US, China, Russia and North Korea are monitoring each other for incoming missiles, when just a few kilometers above the surface of the planet is a technical maelstrom that can damage and destroy each country's Comsat system.
However, one of the main reasons why almost no country is spending money to rid the Earth of space debris is because space is big and these objects are separated by a couple of kilometers to a few hundred miles.
