Op-Ed: The Growing Danger of Kessler Syndrome

Space is big. And the universe should provide virtually no limits on where humanity can expand should our species so desire. Yet, in the small pocket of space near the Earth, an area swarming with objects travelling over 10,000 miles per hour, space still has a carrying capacity. And as NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler found out in the 1970s, if we reach that carrying capacity, we could close off Low Earth Orbit for over a century. This is a threat known as Kessler Syndrome.

To put it simply, as debris accumulates in orbit, it begins to collide with other debris and satellites, generating more debris which then causes even more collisions in a self-perpetuating cycle until almost everything in Low-Earth orbit is turned to dust. And the threat of Kessler Syndrome is growing rapidly as the price of orbital launches is being reduced rapidly and as thousands of small satellites are being deployed into orbit. Currently, there are over 27000 tracked pieces of debris in orbit.

And a variety of recent incidents have begun to show how real the dangers of Kessler Syndrome are. In 2009, a privately owned American Satellite collided with an inactive Russian Satellite, generating nearly 2000 pieces of debris. And this collision was not the only warning sign of what was to come. During the space shuttle era, there were a variety of incidents in which debris caused minor damage to shuttles in orbit, resulting in the need for 41 window replacements between 1992 and 2002.

And yet, even with these warning signs, many have continued to leave debris in orbit with disregard for the damage it could cause. On November 15, Russia launched an anti-satellite missile test at one of their own satellites, forcing the crew of the ISS (which Russia is a member of) to shelter in their return spacecraft only hours later. Less than a week earlier, the ISS had to execute a maneuver to avoid orbital debris from a similar test conducted by China in 2007.

However, the private spaceflight industry of the United States has also acted with a similar ignorance towards the threat of space debris, with a variety of companies filing for the construction of satellite internet ‘mega constellations’ consisting of, in some cases, over 10,000 satellites. And SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, which SpaceX hopes will include as many as 42,000 satellites, already includes over 1,700 satellites. For context, there are 3,372 operational satellites in orbit. And while the orbits of Starlink Satellites are likely to decay quickly if they go offline due to friction with the upper atmosphere, they are nonetheless dangerous to the stability of Low Earth Orbit.

And considering all these risks to Low Earth Orbit, humanity needs to start taking actions to avoid these kinds of catastrophes. The passivation of spacecraft, an event by which spent rocket stages degrade into clouds of debris, could be avoided simply by using leftover rocket fuel to deorbit the spacecraft. Simply adding small features to satellites to automatically deorbit them at the end of their lives could prevent them from becoming dangerous pieces of space garbage in the future, like what the ESA’s envisat has become. And lastly, missions must be funded to deorbit the debris that is already in orbit, which could eventually cause Kessler Syndrome even if no new objects are launched into orbit.

Because if we don’t, a future generation of pioneers could be held back by our own failure to keep the area around the Earth habitable. Humanity could miss out on the countless benefits of space travel for over a century all due to the greed of our generation. Future space stations like the ISS, which could provide incredible research benefits to those of us on Earth, could become virtually impossible. And in the long term, if we continue on a business-as-usual approach to Space Travel, continuing to destroy spacecraft with little care for the debris left behind and continuing to launch thousands of unnecessary satellites into orbit, an entire generation could live not knowing the wonders of space travel.