Space Debris a Growing Concern for LEO Operations, Say Officials

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Space debris in low earth orbit will make satellite operations there increasingly difficult, possibly requiring some sort of device to catch the floating “dead bodies” and bring them back to Earth, said Wade Pulliam, a Tactical Technology Office program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The huge number of maneuvers to avoid conjunctions will continue to increase dramatically if launch schedules and compliance continue at the status quo, he told a American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. Those maneuvers can reduce the lives of LEO satellites, he said. As a result, he said there are two options for the LEO satellites: Operators will need to increase the accuracy of maneuvers, making movements only when truly necessary to extend satellite life, or remove the space debris.

There are numerous issues at stake before anyone begins to remove the space debris, panelists said. While international law says a space object is the property of the country that launched it, the largest concern is over objects too small to track -- under 10 cm -- and therefore impossible to determine origin, said Joseph Rouge, director of the National Security Space Office. Another problem is an estimated 80 percent of the man-made mass in space is Russian, while about 80 percent of the value in space is American, said Pulliam. As a result, the country with the largest incentive to clean up space hasn’t been the largest polluter, something common to environmental legal cases, he said. Two major contributors to the debris have been Chinese anti-satellite missile tests and the collision between an Iridium satellite and a Russian satellite.

While there isn’t any mechanism in place to begin a cleanup, financial responsibility will likely fall to “anyone with skin in the game,” said Col. Stephen Butler, the Air Force Space Command’s head of space situational awareness. Although winds would eventually sweep out the space debris from LEO, unlike in geostationary earth orbit, the effect isn’t nearly fast enough to protect satellites there, said Rouge.

The situation is different in GEO, where most of the objects are active satellites, said Pulliam. For the most part, the satellites stay in their orbital slots unless something goes awry, as is the case with Intelsat’s Galaxy 15 satellite, continuing to float through others’ orbital slots. Satellite operators have started efforts to increase locational data sharing through the Space Data Association to keep better tabs on where those satellites are located, said Tobias Nassif, a director of the SDA and vice president of satellite operations and engineering at Intelsat. Inmarsat and SES are also currently members of the SDA, which would like to eventually enlist all the commercial operators in GEO and LEO, he said.

Asked when the GEO operators would consider addressing the space debris problem in that orbit, “from industry perspective, it comes down to economics,” said Nassif. “Is there is a way to make profit from moving debris from space” or is there significant concern over the number of close calls with space debris, he asked. Intelsat gets warned about once or twice a month of the possibility of conjunctions and right now there isn’t huge need for debris removal in that orbit considering the huge amount of space, he said. Pulliam said the economics could quickly change if satellite insurers raise their premium.