Collision Course: The Need for Better Space Junk Regulations

From Popular Mechanics:

With 3000 satellites and a growing arsenal of space junk, Earth’s orbit is a crowded area. If debris continues to accumulate, low Earth orbit could eventually become too congested for safe satellite use and space travel. Unfortunately, space junk is hard to regulate and even harder to clean up. Here’s an overview of existing space junk laws and some proposals for addressing the problems with debris in space.

Close calls in orbit happen all the time—scientists estimate that launch vehicles and other objects come within striking distance of one other over 1000 times a day. So when tracking reports on Feb. 10, 2009, predicted that Iridium 33, a 12-foot-long, 1200-pound communications satellite, and a 1-ton Russian military sat, Kosmos 2251, would pass within less than half a mile of each other, no one was alarmed. It wasn’t the closest call predicted for that day, or even the closest pass for any of the 66 Iridium satellites that coming week. But at the time of the predicted approach, Iridium 33 fell silent.

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