Time (April 16)
There’s a “looming risk of too many satellites and debris in space.” Current counts indicate there are over 525,000 objects larger than 1 cm and over 100 million of all sizes. “That’s a huge problem, since even such small bits of scrap can carry the bang of a bullet when they’re traveling at orbital speed.” And each collision generates more “more debris clouds, which would strike still more spacecraft, leading to a chain reaction known as the Kessler syndrome that could potentially wipe out whole flocks of spacecraft in that orbital band.”
Tags: 100 million, Chain reaction, Collision, Debris, Debris clouds, Kessler syndrome, Looming, Objects, Orbital speed, Risk, Satellites, Scrap, Space, Spacecraft
The Economist (October 20)
“Some 4,500 satellites circle Earth, providing communications services and navigational tools, monitoring weather, observing the universe, spying and doing more besides. Getting them there was once the business of the superpowers’ armed forces and space agencies. Now it is mostly done by companies and the governments of developing countries.”
Tags: Communications, Companies, Developing countries, Earth, Governments, Navigational tools, Satellites, Space agencies, Spying, Superpowers, Weather
New York Times (August 18)
“Some of the images from NASA’s flagship Terra and Aqua satellites are downright heartbreaking. They seem to make the case that we’re inexplicably intent on engineering our own expulsion from the garden, in a kind of late-breaking, self-inflicted Old Testament dismissal… Having dodged the bullet of cold war nuclear annihilation, we face a new threat just as global, man-made and potentially lethal. A sense of emergency is what is urgently needed.”
Tags: Cold war, Emergency, Global, Heartbreaking. Expulsion, Lethal, Man-made, NASA, Nuclear annihilation, Satellites, Self-inflicted, Threat
