As space becomes more crowded, there’s little hope for new international rules to make it safer.

By Patrick Tucker, Technology Editor

May 6th, 2021

Debris from a crashing Chinese rocket hurtling toward Earth and a Russian projectile-shooting spy satellite are the two examples of a big problem: too few rules governing how nations behave in space. Wednesday on Capitol Hill, lawmakers pressed Biden administration officials on what the United States can do to set some hard boundaries. The answer: The United States wants norms in space, but don’t expect anything legally binding anytime soon.  

There are some internationally agreed upon rules for how nations can use space. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says countries can’t place weapons of mass destruction in space. But the treaty doesn’t prohibit putting other weapons in space, shooting at satellites with anti-satellite rockets, or launching large objects that will come crashing back down to Earth in lots of pieces with unpredictable trajectories. 

Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn, opened the hearing by lamenting a lack of U.S. leadership in establishing rules to curb such behavior. “It seems we’ve given up on the idea of ropes or any punishment. But we’re just going for spider webs instead. Is that the best we can do?”

Answered the State Department’s Bruce Turner, “I think we’re trying to make the best out of what is possible at this given moment in time.” That does not “exclude the possibility of legally binding treaties down the road, but that’s not where we are, given the kinds of competition posed by Russia and China.” 

The United States instead will reach out to like-minded countries to establish non-legally binding norms, said Turner, who leads the department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance. That in turn could “create peer pressure” on countries like China and Russia to align with what other countries are doing. “And maybe over time develop more far-reaching measures,” he said. 

All of that suggests the United States and other nations are far away from establishing a new treaty on space behavior. During his testimony yesterday, Turner brought up the downsides of such agreements.

“The advantage of a treaty is that it’s a legal obligation…so you could argue a violation is more straightforward. Except if you’ve ever worked with a lawyer, you know one of the things you get into is these very difficult and complicated interpretations of what the treaty actually says.” 

He said the lack of a legally binding mechanism to punish bad behavior in space “does not mean you can’t call someone out for violating that norm and you can’t take potential action if an actor is not complying.” He argued that when countries like China and Russia take unsafe actions in space, they could face diplomatic and public pressure through social media. 

Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., took exception to Turner’s reasoning. “Hoping one of our adversaries will be shamed on social media does not seem like an effective strategy here,” he said.

Read more at: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/05/nobody-wants-rules-space/173870/

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Loren Gush from the Verge reported in May 2020:

An out-of-control Chinese rocket may have dumped debris in Africa after falling from space

On Monday, a massive, out-of-control Chinese rocket fell out of the sky off the west coast of Africa, becoming one of the largest human-made objects ever to make an uncontrolled descent to Earth from space. At first, the rocket seemed to harmlessly slam into the Atlantic Ocean. But now it seems that some pieces of debris may have hit solid ground, according to local reports from Côte d’Ivoire describing metallic objects that apparently fell from the sky.

Excerpt:

The whole ordeal was a tad scary since the Long March 5B is a truly massive rocket. When smaller-sized vehicles fall out of orbit, they will usually completely burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. But more massive objects like this rocket have a higher chance of partially surviving reentry. Normally, if a country or company puts a particularly heavy object into orbit like this one, they have a detailed plan in place for how to bring the thing down safely. China hasn’t been clear about its plans for the rocket.

“Did they perhaps have a plan to de-orbit it that went wrong?” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard and satellite tracker, tells The Verge. “The Chinese have not discussed whether they had any plan of the sort, so therefore we’re forced to assume that they didn’t.” China also doesn’t have a very good track record of making sure its rockets don’t hurt people. Rather than launch over the ocean as the US does, China will often launch its rockets over land, prompting reports of rocket parts falling over populated areas.

At 21 metric tons, the core of the Long March 5B is way more massive than the 8-metric-ton Chinese space station Tiangong-1 that careened to Earth in 2018. In fact, the Long March 5B is the fifth most massive object to make an uncontrolled descent to Earth, according to McDowell. “This is the heaviest object to make an uncontrolled reentry since 1991,” he claims.

Adding to experts’ worries, the Long March 5B core took a rare and unexpected path over heavily populated areas on Earth during its final orbit. McDowell notes that the vehicle passed over both Los Angeles and New York City just before it entered the atmosphere.

McDowell says that locals reported loud sonic booms, flashes, and falling debris around the same time that the rocket would have passed over them. Plus, the village is right in line with the rocket’s path around Earth, so he says it’s possible some pieces made it inland. https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21256484/china-rocket-debris-africa-uncontrolled-reentry-long-march-5b

Washington (CNN) Chinese rocket debris is expected to crash into Earth soon. It’s not the first time.

By Paul LeBlanc, CNN

May 6, 2021

The large Chinese rocket that is out of control and set to reenter Earth’s atmosphere this weekend has brought about an alarming but not unprecedented situation. Space debris has crashed into Earth on a number of occasions, including last year. The good news is that debris plunging toward Earth — while unnerving — generally poses very little threat to personal safety. As Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Astrophysics Center at Harvard University, told CNN: “This is not the end of days. “Still, the episode has fueled fresh questions about space debris, uncontrolled reentry and what precautions might need to be taken, if any.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/05/politics/chinese-rocket-debris-space-earth-explainer-scn/index.html

The latest Chinese rocket debri – where will it end up?

The Guardian, Thursday 29 Apr: China launched the Tianhe or “Heavenly Harmony” unmanned core module from Wenchang in China’s Hainan province on a Long-March 5B rocket . https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/29/china-launches-first-module-of-new-space-station

Reuters, May 6, 2021 Remnants of the large rocket (the core stage), are expected to plunge back through the atmosphere this weekend in an uncontrolled re-entry being tracked by U.S. Space Command, according to the U.S. military. 

Space command said in an online statement that the rocket’s exact point of descent into Earth’s atmosphere as it falls back from space “cannot be pinpointed until within hours of its reentry”. The event is projected to occur around May 8th, or 9th.

(Other reports say the 10th)

Harvard-based astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said potentially dangerous debris will likely escape incineration after streaking through the atmosphere at hypersonic speed but in all likelihood would fall into the sea, given that 70% of the world is covered by ocean. tinyurl.com/kbwan9z4

By 9News, May 6, 2021 Does Australia need to worry about the 21-tonne rocket falling back to Earth?

A 21-tonne rocket falling to Earth poses a “very low” risk to Australians – but it’s impossible to say where it will land.

A spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs told nine.com.au the government was monitoring the situation. “It is too early to know the exact timing and location of the re-entry but the risk to populated areas in Australia is very low,” the spokesperson said. “Further updates will be provided as more information becomes available regarding the trajectory and re-entry of the space object.” https://www.9news.com.au/national/rocket-crashing-to-earth-is-australia-in-danger-what-you-should-know/ef4b9a62-7c39-48d4-a652-7bbf011d246b

China’s huge rocket booster falling from space highlights orbital debris problem https://www.space.com/china-huge-rocket-falling-from-space-junk-problem

By Leonard David

Leonard David is author of “Moon Rush: The New Space Race,” which was published by National Geographic in May 2019. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades.

Space Insider, 6th of April 2021

“It really isn’t about this one rocket body … because every rocket body in Earth orbit is uncontrolled,” explains T.S. Kelso of CelesTrak, an analytical group that keeps an eye on Earth-orbiting objects.  there are 2,033 rocket bodies in Earth orbit … at least those that we have orbital data for, as there may be more classified ones. Of course, every one of them is uncontrolled. Of the 2,033, 546 belong to the U.S. and only 169 belong to China.

“Maybe we all need to be more responsible and not leave uncontrolled rocket bodies in orbit,” Kelso told Inside Outer Space.

The worst offender is Russia, with Russia, with 1,035 rocket bodies

https://www.space.com/china-huge-rocket-falling-from-space-junk-problem

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Abstract

The population of artificial satellites and space debris orbiting the Earth imposes non-negligible constraints on both space operations and ground-based optical and radio astronomy. The ongoing deployment of several satellite ‘mega-constellations’ in the 2020s represents an additional threat that raises significant concerns. The expected severity of its unwanted consequences is still under study, including radio interference and information loss by satellite streaks appearing in science images. In this Letter, we report a new skyglow effect produced by space objects: increased night sky brightness caused by sunlight reflected and scattered by that large set of orbiting bodies whose direct radiance is a diffuse component when observed with the naked eye or with low angular resolution photometric instruments. According to our preliminary estimates, the zenith luminance of this additional light pollution source may have already reached ∼20 μcd m⁻², which amounts to an approximately 10 percent increase over the brightness of the night sky determined by natural sources of light. This is the critical limit adopted in 1979 by the International Astronomical Union for the light pollution level not to be exceeded at the sites of astronomical observatories.

© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society.

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by Robert Massey on Mon, 29/03/2021

Scientists reported new research results today suggesting that artificial objects in orbit around the Earth are brightening night skies on our planet significantly more than previously understood.

The research, accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, finds that the number of objects orbiting Earth could elevate the overall brightness of the night sky by more than 10 percent above natural light levels across a large part of the planet. This would exceed a threshold that astronomers set over 40 years ago for considering a location “light polluted”.

“Our primary motivation was to estimate the potential contribution to night sky brightness from external sources, such as space objects in Earth’s orbit,” said Miroslav Kocifaj of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Comenius University in Slovakia, who led the study. “We expected the sky brightness increase would be marginal, if any, but our first theoretical estimates have proved extremely surprising and thus encouraged us to report our results promptly.”

The work is the first to consider the overall impact of space objects on the night sky rather than the effect of individual satellites and space debris affecting astronomers’ images of the night sky. The team of researchers, based at institutions in Slovakia, Spain and the US, modelled the space objects’ contribution to the overall brightness of the night sky, using the known distributions of the sizes and brightnesses of the objects as inputs to the model.

The study includes both functioning satellites as well as assorted debris such as spent rocket stages. While telescopes and sensitive cameras often resolve space objects as discrete points of light, low-resolution detectors of light such as the human eye see only the combined effect of many such objects. The effect is an overall increase in the diffuse brightness of the night sky, potentially obscuring sights such as the glowing clouds of stars in the Milky Way, as seen away from the light pollution of cities.

“Unlike ground-based light pollution, this kind of artificial light in the night sky can be seen across a large part of the Earth’s surface,” explained John Barentine, Director of Public Policy for the International Dark-Sky Association and a study co-author. “Astronomers build observatories far from city lights to seek dark skies, but this form of light pollution has a much larger geographical reach.”

Read more at: https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/satellites-contribute-significant-light-pollution-night-skies

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