Space junk--even 2-inch pieces of metal--could be lethal to a space station speeding at 22 times the speed of sound in its orbit around Earth. Here’s how ISS could strike back
The International Space Station (ISS) floating at geosynchronous orbit at about 400 Km from the surface of the earth, is actually a very fast-moving structure. Blazing across the skies at 17,000 Mph, the space station is actually moving at a speed eight times that of a 50 caliber sniper bullet. So imagine what would happen if something as small as a fragment of a dead satellite were to sit in the path of the ISS orbit: to say ‘absolute devastation’ would be putting it mildly.
Up until now, the ISS has had no choice but to take the passive route of changing its trajectory to avoid an impending collision with space debris, of which there is about 3,000 tons of it floating in low-earth orbit with another belt existing at the higher geo-synchronous orbit. This space garbage comprises decommissioned satellites, used up rocket stages and other chunks of metal of machinery that has been launched over the decades.
Being hazardous to active equipment already in orbit, NASA actually tracks the more significant pieces of this space junk--ones that are at least two inches wide--and at last count there are about 300,000 such pieces floating in space. Even though they seem insignificantly small, even at this size they become lethal, given the velocity at which the space station hurtles through its orbit.
When the space station currently detects the presence of an upcoming cluster of space junk--it is equipped with an early warning system--it plots a new course to avoid it while the astronauts go through a protocol of taking shelter in an escape pod that can take them back to Earth should things go awry.
This could be a thing of the past if the work of Japanese researchers sees fruition. In conjunction with a piece of equipment called the Extreme Universe Space Observatory (EUSO)--a piece of cosmic observing equipment that can also be used to detect impending space junk encounters--they propose the use of a Coherent Amplification Network (CAN) laser to target and blast these pieces of junk.
While these lasers aren’t capable of completely vaporizing the floating pieces of metal, they can serve to nudge them closer to the Earth’s atmosphere, where they will disintegrate as they plummet downward.
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