3 Objects That Can Bring Havoc in Earth’s Orbit | space

SPACE — The space around our planet is getting messy. Thousands of satellites and millions of out-of-control pieces of space debris hurtle far above our heads, at any moment threatening a catastrophic incident. It is this space junk that experts fear the most.

In just the last month, events in near-Earth space have twice made headlines and prompted experts to call for precaution. On January 27, space debris researchers watched in horror as two massive pieces of space junk, namely the upper stage of a decades-old Russian rocket and a long-dead Russian satellite, came within 6 meters of it.

The incident, described as a worst-case scenario, could have spawned thousands of dangerous pieces of debris that would remain in orbit for centuries. Then, a report released on February 6 revealed, in early January, a mysterious Russian satellite broke into 85 sizable fragments.

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Both of these incidents took place in what experts call a bad environment, a low-Earth orbit area that is out of reach of Earth’s natural atmosphere cleaning systems.

Both incidents involved objects that are at the top of space debris experts’ lists of most dangerous objects. Here are three space objects that can wreak havoc in Earth Orbit: What is Space Junk?

1. Russian SL-16 rocket body, aka Zenit upper stage

Surprisingly, it’s not the hundreds or even thousands of new spacecraft aboard megaconstellation carriers like OneWeb or SpaceX that have the highest chance of bringing about an orbit crash. This is old stuff that was launched during the Cold War era and well into the early 2000’s.

“Constellations may have hundreds to thousands of satellites, but they are pretty good at regulating themselves,” said Darren McKnight, senior technical officer at private debris monitoring firm LeoLabs. Space.com, Sunday, February 19, 2023.

“They have a propulsion system that makes them very agile, and they can maneuver to avoid collisions. In contrast, displaced objects do not have the ability to maneuver away from each other.”

Among these old abandoned objects, the SL-16, Russia’s 9.9-ton (9 metric tons), 36-foot-long (11 meters) giant Zenit rocket, is the biggest source of dread. LeoLabs is currently monitoring 18 stages of the rocket circling the Earth in one of the harshest environments at an altitude of about 840 kilometers.

From that height, it took centuries for the debris to descend. Meanwhile, the rocket continues to pass by thousands of other spacecraft that are no longer used, and millions of pieces of debris.

“They are like big yellow school buses with no driver, no brakes, and there is a cumulative risk. It would not be surprising if one of these rocket stages (would) be involved in an imminent collision,” McKnight said.

The sheer size of these rockets indicates a collision will produce large amounts of space debris fragments that will change the poor environment for the worse. It could also possibly trigger Kessler syndrome, the dreaded scenario of an unstoppable series of crashes depicted in the 2013 Oscar-winning film, Gravity.

“If you’re worried about a scenario like Kessler syndrome, the odds are dominated by two large bodies colliding with each other, because that would produce the most debris that could then set off a chain reaction,” said Jonathan McDowell, astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The space debris expert added that the problem of the rocket’s upper stage, while not unique to Russian technology, relates to a launcher design often used by the Soviet Union. Most of the rockets used by Europe, the United States, and even China rely on the first stage falling back to Earth after launch. It then uses the relatively small upper stage of the rocket to store its payload in orbit.

“The US, for example, typically uses the Centaur upper stage, which uses liquid hydrogen. This fuel gives higher miles per gallon. So a smaller rocket can do the same job. Russia uses kerosene or hydrazine, which are high-energy chemical propellant lower that requires a larger rocket for the same job,” said McDowell.

China’s anti-satellite missile test produces the worst space junk…