Headaches ahead for mission control as space junk piles up

摘要

A burgeoning blizzard of space debris is going to have a major impact on the future economics of space flight.rnThat was the prediction made this week by Hugh Lewis of the University of Southampton, UK, at the European Air and Space Conference in Manchester. His projections indicate that the number of close encounters between objects in orbit will rise 50 per cent in the next decade, and quadruple by 2059. Countermeasures will add greatly to the cost of future missions.rnEver since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in 1957, satellite operators have used Earth orbit as a junkyard, dumping spent rocket stages and dead spacecraft there. As the danger of collisions with active spacecraft began to expose the cost of this folly, space agencies have tried not to add to the junk pile, but events have conspired against them.