“The rush to move quickly increases the long-term risk of collisions,” McKnight said.
Deputy head of China’s national space agency Bian Zhigang spoke at the International Astronautical Congress on Monday. He was asked about China’s commitment to good management of the space environment. Bian acknowledged that there is a “very serious challenge” in this area, “especially with mega-constellations.” He did not mention China’s problem with leaving rockets in orbit.
Bian said China is “currently investigating” how to remove space debris from orbit. According to China, one of the missions is to test space debris mitigation techniques docked with many spacecraft in orbitbut U.S. officials see it as a military threat. The same basic technologies needed to spotless up space debris – rendezvous and docking systems, robotic arms and onboard automation – can be used to contact an adversary satellite.
The silver lining
McKnight and his co-authors (from the US, UK, Italy, Japan and Russia) took pains to assess how the threat of space debris would change if some of the most risky objects were removed from the list. He said the results were promising.
“If you remove 10 objects, you reduce them by 30 percent,” McKnight said. “It’s a measurable change. I think that’s what’s been missing in the past in terms of justifying active pollution removal.”
Actively removing contaminants is an elusive proposition. While this is technically feasible, as several missions have shown, the question remains who pays. Is there a viable market for space debris removal services? The European Space Agency and the Japanese space agency have invested little in debris removal initiatives. One of these projects, led by the Japanese company Astroscale, completed a successful demonstration last year set the stage for a future attempt to dock a defunct Japanese rocket and return it to the atmosphere.
Astroscale was founded in 2013 with the goal of clearing low-Earth orbit of space debris. Recognizing the narrow market for these missions, the company decided to also operate satellite servicing and refueling technologies.
“We can make a measurable impact on the debris generation potential and Kessler syndrome potential by removing 10 or 20 objects,” McKnight said. “The bad news is that we have added 26 new facilities in the last two years.”
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.