Cantwell, Hickenlooper, Lummis, Wicker, Introduce Bill to Thin Out the 900,000 Pieces of Orbiting Junk That Endanger the Future of Space Exploration
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Maria Cantwell PR) – Yesterday, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, joined U.S. Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) to introduce the Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act, a bipartisan bill to establish a first-of-its-kind demonstration program to reduce the amount of space junk in orbit.
Space junk, or orbital debris, currently poses a threat to human space exploration, scientific research missions, and emerging commercial space services. In March 2021, a large piece of space junk crashed into a farmer’s property in Grant County, Wash.
“There are more than 900,000 pieces of space junk passing over our heads every day, including abandoned Government satellites,” said Sen. Cantwell. “This bill will jumpstart the technology development needed to remove the most dangerous junk before it knocks out a satellite, crashes into a NASA mission, or falls to the ground and hurts someone. We must continue to explore space, and we have to do it safely.”
“Our society is reliant on satellites in orbit, yet space junk is a constant, growing threat,” said Sen. Hickenlooper, chair of the Commerce Subcommittee on Space and Science. “Space debris endangers everything from global communications to advanced weather forecasting to human space exploration.”
“Space junk is not only dangerous to humans exploring space, it is also a major risk to satellites that people in Wyoming and around the country rely on for basic communication. I’m proud to join my colleagues in introducing the ORBITS Act to kickstart the process of removing debris from orbit,” said Sen. Lummis, ranking member of the Commerce Subcommittee on Space and Science.
“The ORBITS Act would address an important aspect of the complex space debris problem, empowering NASA to partner with the U.S. space industry on active debris removal technology to tackle space junk threats. The United States is the world’s premier spacefaring nation, and I am pleased to join my colleagues in that effort,” said Sen. Wicker.
The program will focus on research, development, and demonstration of technologies capable of safely carrying out successful Active Debris Remediation (ADR) missions and jumpstarting a new market for these services. Washington state companies, including Seattle-based satellite servicer Starfish Space, have advocated for the acceleration of space debris removal efforts. Other Washington companies like SpaceX, Amazon’s Kuiper Systems, and Stoke Space Technologies are also looking for new ways to reduce debris from accumulating in space in the first place or have been threatened by debris. More than 1,300 Washington companies are involved in the aerospace industry.
There are approximately 8,000 metric tons of debris currently in orbit, including at least 900,000 individual pieces of debris that are potentially lethal to satellites. Because of the magnitude of the current debris, simply preventing more debris in the future is not enough.
Full text of the ORBITS Act is available HERE.
The Orbital Sustainability (ORBITS) Act contains the following provisions:
- Direct NASA, the Department of Commerce Office of Space Commerce (“OSC”), and the National Space Council to publish a list of debris that pose the greatest risk to orbiting spacecraft;
- Establish a NASA program to demonstrate removal of debris from orbit, to accelerate the development of required technologies;
- Encourage consistent orbital debris regulations by initiating a multi-agency update to existing orbital debris standards applicable to Government systems; and
- Require OSC, with the National Space Council and Federal Communications Commission, to encourage the development of practices for coordinating space traffic, which will help avoid collisions that create debris.
9 responses to “Cantwell, Hickenlooper, Lummis, Wicker, Introduce Bill to Thin Out the 900,000 Pieces of Orbiting Junk That Endanger the Future of Space Exploration”
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Sounds good, except that the majority of the debris belong to foreign governments, especially China and Russia, and collecting them could be regarded as a violation of the OST.
DEBRIS not abandoned satellites. No one could possibly know who some random piece of insulation, tubing or bolt belongs to, without extensive forensic analysis on the ground.
You must’ve been reading Gary comments for too long.
Nope, folks forget about the political climate the OST was written in. It refers to objects in space because military intelligence is able to tell a lot about a nation’s technology from even a bolt or piece of booster. And the Soviets were paranoid about that.
But you just watch want happens when we start collecting debris from foreign spacecraft or ASAT tests and see the legal protests about it.
Somehow I don’t visualize a fleet of SPECTRE designed spacecraft, gingerly capturing spent upper stages and assorted bits -then gently returning them to a soft touchdown.
The idea is some technology to de-orbit abandoned junk and send it on a destructive entry.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
What comes to mind is an anti debris launcher along the lines of an ASAT pop up. I picture a balloon deployed at the top of the arc. Debris hits first side then the gas inside and then the exit side slowing the shrapnel more.
That is creative thinking, turn some of the debris kinetic energy into retropulsion.
There’s many schemes out there, they are reported on this site regularly.
I gotta say, it is a simple pleasure to have a exchange of thoughts on this site, without 37 stupid hate-O-grams from SLSpacetroll.
Which still leaves plenty of U.S.-flagged debris to practice on. By the time we police our own trash, it is reasonably probable that both the PRC and Russia will have ceased to exist as nation-states, or at least ceased to be spacefaring states. The OST is silent on the subject of what may be done with the space objects launched originally by defunct nations or even by those which have left the ranks of spacefarers. But dead nations file no lawsuits. And nations which have ceased to have any spacefaring capability could be credibly argued to no longer have standing to object to their debris objects being removed from orbit. So we would be within our rights to take unilateral action in such cases.
Actually any violations of the OST are simply left to the nations involved to negotiate between themselves as there were no enforcement mechanism included, which is how the USA and Soviet Union wanted it. So if the nations do disappear they wouldn’t be there to negotiate with.?
Which should do wonders for the speed with which such negotiations can be completed.