By Bruce J. Parker

In the infancy of the Space Age, it was the harsh natural environment of whizzing meteorites and cosmic radiation that occupied the attention of engineers.  Now the earth has a humongous “ring around the collar” of space trash (junk), or “orbital debris” in the official jargon of the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA). And this mobile junk yard is a matter of serious concern.

Among other objects, space trash consists of exploded rocket stages, pieces of satellites (over 4,000 have been launched), blown-off hatches, pieces of installation, screws, bolts and even a glove lost by astronaut Ed White during a 1965 space walk. Some of this junk orbits earth or floats through outer space. And when you gaze skyward at the harvest moon, don’t think about the 20 tons of debris that have been left behind on that non-Subtitle D facility.

NASA estimates there are 400,000 pieces of refuse that are observable, ranging in size from an inch to the size of a truck, while hundreds of millions of tiny flecks of other debris are not visible through high-powered telescopes and sophisticated optical equipment.

And, yes, there is also human excrement and urine floating in space. During the 15 years before the Russian space station Mir fell to earth, cosmonauts tossed their waste overboard in bags, although this is not generally done today.

It’s not surprising that space is becoming a junk yard. After all, it was only a few years ago that an expedition to Mount Everest brought down tons of oxygen canisters, climbing equipment, bottles, cans, and other discarded items. In our excitement to explore new frontiers, we forget to plan for bringing home the waste we produce. We have left our calling card in the oceans, tropical rainforests, on the highest mountain peaks, and now in space.

I was surprised, however, that Los Angeles and New York City had not proposed sending their garbage into space—until I discovered that it costs about $10,000 per pound to transport items on a space shuttle. Los Angeles pays about $35 dollars a ton to dispose of its garbage in the Sunshine Canyon landfill, and that’s one heck of a bargain compared to space disposal at $20 million dollars per ton. Even back east we don’t pay a tip fee this high.

The primary problem is the danger space trash poses to manned and unmanned shuttles, the International Space Station (ISS), and to commercial and military satellites. Indeed, much of this space junk travels at speeds of up to 23,000 mph without any stop signs or rights-of-way, at least until Halliburton gets a no-bid contract to build some infrastructure. According to NASA, garbage at such a speed can seriously damage spacecraft: A 4-inch scrap of debris has the power of 25 sticks of dynamite!

There have been several close calls. In 1995, a fragment of a circuit board smashed into Columbia’s payload door.  If it had punched through into the bay area and damaged a critical system ... well, I’d rather not think about it. 

Although the US Space Surveillance Network tracks over 13,000 man-made waste objects 4 inches or more in diameter, the possibility of collisions still exists because the system is not perfect. One protection that NASA took was to build the Whipple Bumper—a shield weighing over 5 tons—to protect the ISS from a serious collision.  (It’s unlikely that the shield is in honor of Mr. Whipple, he of squeezing-the-Charmin fame; NASA probably did not have that kind of collision in mind.)

Cleaning up space junk in orbit is more daunting than dealing with the “residential” waste generated by astronauts manning a shuttle or the ISS. In both cases, however, there is no “Call 1-800-Got-Junk.”

Trash on a manned shuttle is returned to earth for conventional disposal when the spacecraft completes its mission. When a shuttle docks with the ISS, it transfers supplies and takes back bags of trash to be disposed on earth when the shuttle returns.  When the manned shuttle is not scheduled for a docking, a supply vehicle is sent to space on an unmanned rocket, docks with the ISS, unloads supplies, then leaves with trash bags, which burn up along with the vehicle during a controlled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Nicholas Johnson, NASA’s head scientist and program manager for orbital debris, acknowledges the formidable difficulties in removing junk already floating in space. Proposals to blast junk with high-powered lasers or launching a garbage spaceship as a surrogate front-end loader are both technologically and economically not viable at this time.

But two things are for sure. First, our home planet and the rest of our solar system are environmentally interdependent. We cannot afford to screw things up.  Solutions and opportunities posed by problems of junk in space must be informed by the same environmental principles that we finally are beginning to more deeply understand and apply on Earth, i.e., resource and ecological conservation and sustainability. As we push on to Mars with longer durations in space and the need for more equipment and supplies, the application of these principles becomes critical. 

Second, if there is intelligent life in outer space, other than our good friends on the USS Enterprise, they will be watching us.  Let’s not disappoint them. MSW

MSW - May/June 2006