space much during our everyday lives, but more than
1000 miles above our heads. Some 4500 active satelli
zoomed by providing all sorts of things for the
technology we use everyday. The problem is it's getting
crowded up there from used rockets to debris from old
satellites, even massive solar and all of it is
orbiting the planet at 17,000 MPH. Science reporter an
meteorologist Jeff Fox explainw it won't be easy to
clean up this mess at this moment. Thousands of
satellites are circling the Earth in well controlled
orbits but they're not alone. In fact, they are greatly
outnumbered by orbiting debris. Nobody's driving those
pieces of debris there bolts. They're nuts. They're
scraps of metal, there are pieces of satellites. Those
are the dominant things in space. This is something Ed
lu has thought about with two trips to the shuttle and
another to the international space station. We knew
that the number one risk to dying per Nasa's own own
estimations for a space station astronaut is being hit
by orbital debris. It was then it is today And it's not
like we just started thinking about this today. A NASA
engineer looked at orbiting spa junk back in the late
70s. His findings were dubbed the Kessler syndrome.
That was really actually shocked at how quickly things
could start coming apart. One collision creates more
debris, which creates more collisions. If you saw the
movie gravity, it was all about Don Kessler's
calculations. This is all governed by the laws of
physics, but to make it simple, if an object is going
fast enough, even something very tiny can make an
impactful collision can cause destruction and in space
There are at least 34,000 objects As large as this jar.
The average collision at the international space
station altitude about 25,000 m and it has the effect
of just about breaking up anything into a catastrophic
explosion due to the energy of that collision. What can
we do It's possible, we might be able to get rid of the
100 or so uncontrolled large pieces of orbital trash.
This is one proposal from the european space Agency,
but the real problem is with the smaller pieces, all we
can do there is track them and try and get out of the
way. That's where leo labs comes in with skyward
pointing radar scattered around the wor. ldTheir
business is to track and warn satellite operators un
routine conditions, they evaluate hundreds of millions
of potential collisions a month and some are more
concerning than others. 10, 15 of those per day. That's
generally the range at which a satellite operator woul
move their satellite add to this mix. The wildcard of
space warfare. Here's the debris field from when the
Russians recently blew up one of their own satellites
and they're not the first decades ago. The US did it
too. It was such a big mess of general. There's so muc
debris that the United States said, we won't do that
again. Now, if we could just convince the others. Yeah,
science reporter and meteorolog Jeff Fox joins us.
Now, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the Y
tonight. So you interviewed Donald Kessler, help us
understand the kessler syndrome as space junk hits
other space junk. The problem just multiplies. Why is
that alarming Well, obviously, things around the Earth
are moving very quickly, 17,500 miles an hour is about
the low earth orbit speed, but things are not moving in
parallel. They're moving in all sorts of intertwining
and intersecting orbits. So eve a tiny piece that hits
at a very fast speed can cause a great deal of problem
because the whole calculation for energy is mass, which
in these little tiny pieces of space junk may be very
small time speed, which in the case of the space junk
is immense. So the force is great even from a tiny
piece, could the kessler effect mean we would be
trapped here on Earth then Yeah. Oh yeah, sure. So what
the kessler syndrome says is you get one explosion or
one collision and it sets off space junk throughout
that orbital plane. But now, instead of having a little
bit of space, don't you have these hundreds or
thousands of pieces and they set off more chain
reactions. So the simple answer to the question is yeah,
we could set up literally a barrier at a certain area
in orbit that nothing could be orbit, very difficult to
launch anything through. So this is the major concern
of the Kessler syndrome and by the way, it's more for
little tiny stuff than from the big junk, we can track
the big junk. Fine, we can move out of the way. It's
the little tiny things. Things. Well, if you take
things that are just marble sized or smaller or excuse
me, marble sized or larger, we're talking about at
least a half million objects in Earth orbit. So on
several occasions, astronauts on the international
space station have had to huddle in an emergency escape
pod because of the risk of an impact. How close do
these pieces actually come Well, the Nasa and the
Russians who run the I.S.S together uh were very very
cautious. So If the chance is one in 10,000 that
there's going to be a collision, they will move the
international space station. If it's one in 100,000,
they'll move it. But only if it won't affect any of the
current experiments or operations. But even without
moving when the space shuttle was up, it had a number
of windows that had to be replaced after flights
because they had been hit by debris and here's the
scary part, the debris that hurt these windows was just
paint flecks little pieces of pink that it peeled off
something. But that's enough at orbital speed to do
damage. That's incredible. How how bad is the problem
getting like how much more space junk is collected up
there Well, we're trying to be better now that we once
were uh in the beginning of the space program, nobody
really thought about low earth orbit as a place that
would have much commercial use. I mean we could only
launch one satellite in a time. Anything in low earth
orbit codnul't stay up very long because of its
proximity to Earth. So we really didn't think about it
all that much Now. We're talking about Elon musk and
SpaceX wanting to put up 20 30,000 satellites. The
company that that is affiliated with amazon wants to
put up over 10,000 satellites and this is just in the
United States. There are other international compani
that want to get involved as well. So this is not
debris as much as it's planned. But it's gonna be like
the Long Island expressway on friday at five o'clock
with a snowstorm coming, it's gonna be awful crowded
and there's not gonna be much place to move Before 1957.
There were no manmade objects in space. Now there's
4500. How did that happen over time Well, we weren't
careful, we never thought about the implications. I
mean there are still pieces of roct that are up from
the 1960s still orbiting the earth and by the way
uncontrolled. But these large pieces, this really isn't
the problem. And it took me a while to get my head
wrapped around this as well. All the large pieces are
very well tracked not only by leo labs who I mentioned
in that package, but also by the military. It's the
little tiny pieces. These pieces marble sized and
smaller that can take out a satellite that can injure
the space station that can create a kessler syndrome
scenario. There are just too many of them and we can't
track them all. A lot of them are just too small. You
mentioned that some countries deliberately avoid
destroying satellites to reduce the amount of space
junk. Are there rules or international treaties that
cover this Well, there is an international treaty, But
it came about in 1966 I believe so early on in the
program. And really if you look at it, it only really
addresses the problems that we expected. If people
decided to militarize space and what the treaties do is
it makes it illegal to put atomic weapons in space, to
put weapons of mass destruction in space. But what it
doesn't talk about is cleaning up on your mess. You
know, all the signs that we have in national parks
telling you that it's okay to take pictures, but don't
leave anything else in the national park. We should
have that surrounding the earth as well. We have been
terrible stewards, not only the United States, but
everyone else who has launched things into orbit. Oka
Jeff Fox, a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you
for your time. You're welcome. Coming up next on the