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Scientific American

February 1, 2019

1 min read

Relentless Rise of Space Junk Threatens Satellites and Earth

Relentless accumulation threatens satellites and Earth

By Mark Fischetti

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Space is vast. Yet Earth orbits are becoming increasingly littered with debris (speckled graphic). A satellite could be demolished if struck by a 10-centimeter piece of junk, about the size of a softball. Even a one-centimeter tidbit could disable a spacecraft. And the more functioning, defunct or fragmented objects up there, the more that decay in the atmosphere (pink stripe). The collision problem has become so serious that in 2016 the European Space Agency (ESA), which tracks the objects, announced it might capture derelict satellites in low orbits, starting in 2023. Clutter is rising fast as more countries and companies launch electronics. In February 2017 India sent 101 shoebox-sized “cubesats” into a low orbit on a single rocket.

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Credit: Jan Willem Tulp; Sources: “Space Debris by the Numbers” (information correct as of January 2018), European Space Agency www.esa.int; Space Debris: The ESA Approach. ESA Br-336. European Space Agency, March 2017 ; ESA Space Debris Office discoweb.esoc.esa.int (raw data)

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Mark Fischetti has been a senior editor at Scientific American for 17 years and has covered sustainability issues, including climate, weather, environment, energy, food, water, biodiversity, population, and more. He assigns and edits feature articles, commentaries and news by journalists and scientists and also writes in those formats. He edits History, the magazine's department looking at science advances throughout time. He was founding managing editor of two spinoff magazines: Scientific American Mind and Scientific American Earth 3.0. His 2001 freelance article for the magazine, "Drowning New Orleans," predicted the widespread disaster that a storm like Hurricane Katrina would impose on the city. His video What Happens to Your Body after You Die?, has more than 12 million views on YouTube. Fischetti has written freelance articles for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian, Technology Review, Fast Company, and many others. He co-authored the book Weaving the Web with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, which tells the real story of how the Web was created. He also co-authored The New Killer Diseases with microbiologist Elinor Levy. Fischetti is a former managing editor of IEEE Spectrum Magazine and of Family Business Magazine. He has a physics degree and has twice served as the Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture at Centenary College of Louisiana, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2021 he received the American Geophysical Union's Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism, which celebrates a career of outstanding reporting on the Earth and space sciences. He has appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, CNN, the History Channel, NPR News and many news radio stations. Follow Fischetti on X (formerly Twitter) @markfischetti

More by Mark Fischetti
Scientific American Magazine Vol 320 Issue 2This article was originally published with the title “Space Junk Piles Up” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 320 No. 2 (), p. 78
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0219-78
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