Waste in space: all the news surrounding space junk

We’re getting a close look at some of the space junk that’s floating in space thanks to Tokyo-based company Astroscale Japan. New images taken from a distance of just 50 meters, show the discarded upper stage of a Japanese H-2A rocket that’s currently trapped in Earth’s orbit. They were taken by Astroscale’s Active Debris Removal (ADRAS-J) satellite following the spacecraft’s first fly-around observation of the debris.

ADRAS-J was launched on February 18th with the goal of collecting observational data that can be used to eventually remove large-scale space junk from orbit. The satellite has been monitoring the rocket’s upper stage for several months. The images were released after a test of the craft’s autonomous collision avoidance system designed to allow ADRAS-J to safely approach debris at close distances.

NASA has confirmed suspicions that the strange object that crashed into a Florida home last month did indeed come from the International Space Station (ISS). The agency analyzed the cylindrical object after it tore through the roof and two floors of a house in Naples on March 8th and established that it came from a cargo pallet of aging batteries that was released from the ISS back in 2021.

More specifically, NASA revealed in a blog post on Monday that the offending object was a support component used to mount the batteries on the 5,800-pound (2,630-kilogram) pallet released from the space station. Made from Inconel (a metal alloy that can withstand extreme environments like high temperature, pressure, or mechanical loads), the recovered stanchion weighs 1.6 pounds and measures four inches high by 1.6 inches in diameter — a smidge smaller than a standard can of Red Bull.

The FCC has issued its first fine for space junk to Dish Network for not properly deorbiting its satellite. The company admitted it was liable for not shifting its EchoStar-7 to a safer spot and will pay a penalty of $150,000 and implement a compliance plan.

Space debris — non-functioning manmade materials floating around space — can pose a hazard to working infrastructure, including the ISS, which has had run-ins with debris in the past. According to the FCC, defunct satellites like Dish’s can also interfere with “the nation’s terrestrial and space-based communication systems by increasing the risk of damage to satellite communications systems.”

The swift rise of internet satellites, forming megaconstellations, and accumulating space junk are already starting to mess with astronomers’ research. The problem is growing exponentially, scientists warn in a series of papers published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy. And they want regulators to do something about it.

The swarm of satellites functioning in low Earth orbit has more than doubled since 2019, when space-based internet initiatives really started to take off. That year, SpaceX and OneWeb launched their first batches of satellites with the goal of providing global internet coverage. Orbiting the planet at a closer range than other satellites is supposed to make those services faster, cutting down how far signals have to travel to and from Earth. The tradeoff is that at such a close range, companies need a lot more satellites to cover the whole planet.

After years of zooming through deep space, a presumed leftover piece of a Chinese rocket slammed into the Moon today, just as space tracking experts expected it would. At least, it should have hit the Moon around 7:30AM ET this morning, as long as the law of gravity has not changed. The collision brings an end to the rocket’s life in space and likely leaves a fresh new crater on the Moon that may be up to 65 feet wide.

The now-expired rocket has caused quite a buzz this past month. First of all, the vehicle was never intended to crash into the Moon, making it a rare piece of space debris to find its way to the lunar surface by accident. Additionally, there was some confusion over its identity, with various groups trying to nail down exactly where the rocket came from.

Update February 13th, 12PM ET: The astronomer who originally predicted that this object would hit the Moon, Bill Gray, updated his prediction on February 12th, arguing that the vehicle is probably not a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket after all. Instead, he now thinks the object is a leftover piece of a Chinese rocket. The Verge wrote a new story about this update, which you can read here. We’ve kept the original story below, as most of the information still stands, just with a different kind of rocket.

For the last seven years, a leftover piece of an old SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been circling the Earth on a very wide orbit, having a pretty unremarkable time. But that’s all about to change on March 4th, when this rocket piece is predicted to accidentally slam into the far side of the Moon. And according to the astronomer who first figured this out, it’s a reminder that we need to take better care of our deep space junk.

Early this morning, NASA postponed a spacewalk scheduled to occur outside the International Space Station today, after getting word of a possible safety threat from some nearby space debris. It’s unclear where the debris is coming from, but the delay comes about two weeks after Russia blew up one of its own satellites in orbit, creating thousands of dangerous fragments that threatened the space station.

NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Thomas Marshburn were all set to don spacesuits and leave the confines of the ISS this morning at around 7:10AM ET, in order to replace an antenna on the outside of the station. It would have been the fifth spacewalk for Marshburn and the first for Barron.

Satellite trackers have been working overtime to figure out just how much dangerous debris Russia created when it destroyed one of its own satellites early Monday — and the picture they’ve painted looks bleak. Multiple visual simulations of Russia’s anti-satellite, or ASAT, test show a widespread cloud of debris that will likely menace other objects in orbit for years.

Early this week, Russia launched a missile that destroyed the country’s Kosmos 1408 satellite, a large spacecraft that orbited the Earth roughly 300 miles up. The breakup of the satellite created at least 1,500 pieces of trackable fragments, according to the US State Department, as well as thousands of smaller pieces that cannot be tracked. All of those pieces are still in low Earth orbit, moving at thousands of miles an hour and posing a threat to any objects that might cross their path. Initially, that even included the International Space Station, with crew members on board forced to take shelter in their spacecrafts as the debris cloud from the satellite passed by the ISS a couple of times.

A pressure vessel from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage fell on a man’s farm in Washington State last week, leaving a “4-inch dent in the soil,” the local sheriff’s office said Friday.

The black Composite-Overwrapped Pressure Vessel, or COPV, was a remnant from the alien invasion-looking breakup of a Falcon 9 second stage over Oregon and Washington on March 26, local officials said. The stage reentered the atmosphere in an unusual spot in the sky after sending a payload of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to orbit.

Earth is about to get a temporary mini-moon — and this one might be space junk. Researchers are tracking an object that looks like it will be captured by Earth’s gravity for just a few months this winter before safely heading back out into the Solar System. It might be a standard asteroid, but some astronomers say that the mystery object’s path indicates that it could be a part of a 1960s era rocket.

“I’m pretty jazzed about this,” Paul Chodas, the manager of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies told The Associated Press. Chodas is one of the world’s leading experts on asteroids and has been on the lookout for returning space debris for decades, he told the AP.

As the number of satellites and space junk in orbit continues to increase, so do the chances of these human-made objects colliding with one another, potentially creating more debris that could threaten other healthy spacecraft. Now, a new tool shows just how crowded Earth orbit is by tracking space objects through their close calls every couple of seconds.

Called the “Conjunction Streaming Service Demo,” the graph tool illustrates in real time the sheer number of space objects — out of an assortment of 1,500 items in low Earth orbit — that get uncomfortably close to one another in a period of 20 minutes. While the X-axis keeps track of the time, the Y-axis shows the short distance between two approaching space objects, ranging from five kilometers to the dreaded zero kilometers. On the graph is a series of arcs demonstrating when two pieces of debris rapidly move toward one another, make their closest approach, and then speed away.

More than four months after India destroyed one of its own satellites in space, dozens of pieces of debris from the cataclysmic event still circulate in orbit, posing a small but potential threat to other functioning spacecraft that might pass close by. It’s possible that some of this debris could stay in orbit for a full year before falling back down to Earth, according to space trackers.

On March 27th, India fired a ground-based missile at a test satellite the country had launched in January, demonstrating the capability to take out a spacecraft in Earth orbit. Destroying an orbiting satellite is no easy feat, as these vehicles are relatively small and zoom above our planet at thousands of miles per hour. Hitting one directly with a missile takes a lot of precision, and it sends a message that a country can take out a perceived hostile satellite if necessary.

A British satellite in orbit around Earth has successfully tested out a particularly pointed method for cleaning up space debris: piercing objects with a harpoon. In a new video taken from the spacecraft, the satellite shoots its onboard harpoon to puncture a target panel that’s about five feet away.

The test was part of the University of Surrey’s RemoveDEBRIS mission, which is designed to try out various ways of getting rid of debris in orbit. Space debris has become a growing concern for the aerospace community over the last few decades, as it makes the space environment more dangerous for future satellites. These objects typically consist of defunct spacecraft and other uncontrollable objects circling around Earth at more than 17,000 miles per hour. Getting hit by even a small piece of this debris could be enough to take out a functioning satellite, and the collision could create even more dangerous pieces of junk in the process.

A British satellite, designed to test out ways to clean up debris in space, just successfully ensnared a simulated piece of junk in orbit using a big net. On Sunday, September 16th, the vehicle, known as the RemoveDEBRIS satellite, deployed its onboard net, which then captured a nearby target probe that the vehicle had released a few seconds earlier. The demonstration shows that a simple idea like a net may be an effective way to clean up all the material orbiting Earth.

The RemoveDEBRIS satellite is meant to try out numerous different methods for cleaning up space junk, which has become a growing problem ever since we started launching rockets into orbit. Thousands of dead, uncontrollable objects linger in orbit, including defunct satellites, spent launch vehicles, and other pieces of debris that have come off other spacecraft. And all of this junk is moving fast, at upwards of 17,000 miles per hour. The more debris we have in orbit, the higher the chance that these pieces might collide at break-neck speeds, creating even more debris that could pose a threat to other spacecraft.

Geckos, some of nature’s most skilled climbers, may hold the key to cleaning up the enormous amount of debris clogging up the space around Earth. Scientists at NASA and Stanford have developed a prototype robot that can grip objects in space, the same way a gecko sticks to walls. Such a robot could be a critical tool for grabbing and relocating space trash, helping to clean up Earth orbit and make it much safer for space travel.

The robot capitalizes on the same concept that geckos use to climb. The animal’s feet aren’t actually sticky; they’re covered in thousands of microscopic hairs that, together, act like a flexible adhesive. To imitate gecko feet, the robot has special pads outfitted with thousands of tiny silicone rubber hairs, which are 10 times smaller than the hairs on your head. This allows the robot to use the same forces to “grab” simply by placing its pads on an object’s surface.

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, has confirmed the failure of a mission intended to test technology for clearing up debris in space. The Kounotori 6 cargo transporter returned to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere on Monday, officials said. Though the experimental segment of the mission was a failure, Kounotori did successfully deliver supplies to the International Space Station after launching in December.

Kounotori 6 carried a 700-meter (2,296-foot) metal tether that was designed to slow down space junk and bring it back to Earth with electromagnetic force. JAXA says there was an issue with the mechanism to release the tether, however, and technicians were unable to fix it. It’s the second notable setback to hit JAXA in recent weeks after the agency failed to put its SS-520-4 rocket into orbit last month.

Humans filled waterways, landfills, and streets with trash, so it’s no surprise the same thing happened in Earth’s orbital neighborhood. Now our species will finally take a crack at cleaning up.   

Some missions focus on dead satellites, aiming to catch them with robotic arms, spear them with harpoons, or slow them with sails or tethers. Others aim for smaller pieces with lasers or stick to them with adhesive. It’s all an effort to keeping low-Earth orbit, the region up to 1,200 miles from the surface, usable. “Keeping all this litter in space, it’s like litter on the floor,” said Jason Forshaw a research fellow at the University of Surrey. “It’s becoming more of a risk.”