Are Satellites littering our solar system?

 

Sky has always fascinated human beings. Space exploration was triggered by the Nazis developing V2 long-range missiles in the 1930s-40s. They fired these long-range missiles to London which flew over the English channel with a speed of more than 3500 miles per hour. After the second world war, America and the Soviet Union started their missile programs and started studying different possibilities of space travel.

On October 4, 1957, Soviet Union launched their first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 into space. Within less than a year, the US also send their first artificial satellite Explorer 1 into space. Within 60 years after launching the first satellite into orbit, now we have a lot of these satellites orbiting earth. Once the satellites break down, the countries which launched these satellites do not take the trouble of bringing them down to Earth. This is because of the vast expenditure in doing the same. It will take almost the same money as launching a new satellite into orbit. So the countries leave these satellites in the same orbit creating space debris. We have already launched thousands of satellites into space and keep adding more every day. SpaceX alone has launched more than a thousand satellites the past year. As the number of these man-made objects increases, they can collide and malfunction. Out of millions of junk satellites (debris) lurking in the solar system, we could track only about 30000 of them. Statistical model suggests there could be more than a million objects of the size of hand grenades orbiting Earth. Owing to their great orbital speeds these objects are a greater risk to astronauts, satellites, and even to International Space Stations. This debris can also create problems like radio frequency interference, scattering of electromagnetic radiation and also makes the terrestrial telescopes observing distant objects ineffective.

Cooperation between the superpowers and space exploring countries is the only way forward to this big problem. The major powers must elevate space governance to the level of other threats to humanity like climate change, nuclear proliferation, etc. All the countries should overcome differences and regulate the use of satellites, otherwise, we are heading for great trouble soon. We have countries (El Salvador and Honduras in 1969) that fought wars in the name of a football game. So we are not very far from countries verging wars against each other in the name of ‘Space’ space.