There is so much space debris in low orbits around the Earth, we wish Chicken Little were right about the sky falling-at least when it comes to debris that is cluttering up our space environment and starting to truly interfere with use of space.
This man-made debris is clogging up active satellite traffic lanes and the situation is getting worse. As we approach space gridlock, space will eventually become inaccessible to all nations for all applications.
If we choose to do nothing, there will eventually be no more GPS navigation, no more weather data beamed from space and no more satellite television. And, unfortunately, no one is doing anything about cleaning up space! This year has been a tough one for many segments of the population.
So, let's do at least one thing that will help our future-generate ideas on how to clean up space.
Launchspace put out the Call for Action! Action was what we got through your many responses! Launchspace thanks all those who sent us ideas. We appreciate your time and input. Most of the suggestions had merit and some were pretty innovative.
We will not judge the entries nor can we quantitatively score them. Moreover, since Launchspace is not a funding agency, please do not send us detailed proposals seeking funding.
In addition to the many basic ideas submitted to Launchspace, there were well devised descriptions of concepts and even a few papers from people at organizations such as Aerojet, Aerospace Corporation, NASA, Lockheed Martin and the Applied Physics Lab of Johns Hopkins University, among many others.
We got responses from throughout the U.S. and from other countries including the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
The suggestions fall into two main categories:
– limiting new debris through such means as de-orbiting mechanisms integrated into the design of future satellites and
– eliminating existing space debris
It is exciting and positive that there is so much interest out there in solving this problem. It is critical to our future here on Earth and in space. In the next couple of weeks, Launchspace will publish a series of short articles summarizing your concepts.
We will provide a brief analysis of the recommendations, tell you what seems plausible and why, and again get your input! Together, we can raise awareness hopefully leading to positive action on this crucial issue.
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