The debris cloud from the recent Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test has circled the globe, forming what experts declare to be a menace to any craft or satellite in low earth orbit.
The Chinese ASAT, a ballistic missile tipped with a destructive device, was launched on January 11th, 2007. It destroyed an old weather satellite – the Fengyun-1C spacecraft. As of today, the US military’s Space Surveillance Network has cataloged or is tracking more than 900 bits of debris from the explosion that are at least ten centimeters in diameter.
However, the total number of objects from this single incident reaches into the tens of thousands. NASA estimates that the number of debris fragments larger than one centimeter exceeds 35,000.
“Any of these debris has the potential for seriously disrupting or terminating the mission of operational spacecraft in low Earth orbit. This satellite breakup represents the most prolific and serious fragmentation in the course of 50 years of space operations,” said NASA’s Nicholas Johnson, Chief Scientist for Orbital Debris at the space agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The cloud extends from less than 125 miles to more than 2,292 miles; this range encompasses all of low Earth orbit. Chief Scientist Johnson states that ““This satellite breakup represents the most prolific and serious fragmentation in the course of 50 years of space operations.”
According experts quoted in the New York Times today, the Chinese ASAT test brought closer the danger of chain reaction, or cascade, of collision events in which fragments collide with each other, creating even more objects. This would precipitate what has been called the Kessler Syndrome, after Donald J. Kessler, a former head of the orbital debris program at NASA, in which launches from Earth would become impossibly dangerous owing to the risk of collision.
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