If you thought humanity already had its hands full with climate change, think again.
With satellites and space junk increasingly cluttering our planet’s low Earth orbit, a team of scientists warn that this entire region could suddenly collapse into a destructive maelstrom of swirling debris, posing a threat to any spacecraft that dares to venture up there, and hurling dangerous missiles of space junk down onto our planet below.
Their study, which is yet-to-be-peer reviewed, builds on a theoretical scenario first laid out by NASA scientist Donald Kessler, which describes how just a few accidental collisions between satellites could quickly cascade into a vicious cycle in which the resulting debris causes even more smash-ups, and thus even more debris. At worst, the ensuing vortex of dangerous debris could trap us on our planet and set back spaceflight for decades.
With more satellites being launched into low Earth orbit than ever, this scenario — dubbed Kessler syndrome — is starting to be considered as a serious possibility. Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone maintains a “megaconstellation” of over 9,000 expendable satellites, with Amazon set to follow suit with its own megaconstellation and China working on yet another.
Kessler originally envisioned this orbital catastrophe unfolding over many years. But the new work adds a grim twist to the mix. What if a Kessler syndrome type scenario was suddenly kicked off by a violent solar storm? These outbursts by the Sun blast the Earth with electromagnetic waves that can disrupt electrical grids and communications. In theory, a powerful enough one could cut off our contact with satellites and fry their navigation systems, leaving them with no means to stay on course.
It’s a concerning possibility. With all that stuff up there, SpaceX’s expendable satellites have to constantly perform maneuvers to avoid hitting each other and other objects, with over 300,000 of these maneuvers performed last year.
Investigating this possibility, the researchers created a new metric called the CRASH clock, which measures how long it would take a catastrophic collision to occur if the satellites lose navigation in a crisis like a solar storm.
The gist is that things would go south very quickly. The researchers calculated that satellites may be having a “close approach,” or pass within one kilometer of each other, once every 36 seconds in low Earth orbit — an uncomfortably close distance in space.
Factoring that in, they put the CRASH clock at just 5.5 days, meaning that humanity would have very little time to intervene if this solar storm did occur. On the other hand, if we were struck by a solar event of this magnitude — like the infamous Carrington Event in 1859, which took out the planet’s burgeoning telegraph infrastructure and today would likely cause blackouts the world over— we would probably have more immediate concerns to worry about.
More on space: Experts Warn That There’s Something Wrong With the Moon Rocket NASA Is About to Launch With Astronauts Aboard
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