We need to talk about SPACE JUNK
Orbiting satellites enable us to stay connected 24 hours a day, but can also cause major problems
There’s an estimated 7,500 tonnes of hardware currently orbiting Earth. Does the intense schedule of Iridium NEXT satellite launches just add to the problem of space junk? Yes and no. The Iridium constellation’s original owner Motorola put 95 satellites in orbit during 1997 and 1998, but many failed. “There were a few out-of-the-box failures, some de-orbited quickly, but there are still some tumbling satellites up there now,” says Matt Desch, CEO of Iridium Communications.
If that sounds dangerous, it’s because it is. In 2009, Iridium Communications lost a satellite when it collided with Kosmos-2251, a defunct Soviet satellite, over northern Siberia. The US Space Surveillance Network still tracks the debris of that event. There are thought to be around two dozen Iridium ‘tumblers’ and many of them could be up there for 20 years. But Iridium Communications is taking responsibility for clearing up after itself by deorbiting old satellites. “Our goal has always been to deal with everything that we can as quickly as we can and it’s a commitment we are honouring,” says Desch.
The original 95-strong Iridium constellation was the biggest ever deployment of satellites by one company, but there are two bigger global high-speed satellite internet constellations planned. OneWeb is proposing to launch 900 satellites while SpaceX is planning 4,425. In other words, the problem of space debris – which includes rocket upper stages and mission-related objects, not just defunct satellites – is not going to go away any time soon.