Is the Kessler syndrome imminent?

[CraigD]

By now, most of us spaceflight enthusiasts have likely heard about the 2/10/09 collision of two large Earth orbiting satellites, an Iridium and a defunct 16 year old Kosmos-2251 comsat, at an altitude of about 776 km, and the resulting spreading debris clouds. If not, this CSN article (I pick it because it’s the only one that came up in a google search as mentioning Kessler Syndrome, the subject I’d like to discuss in this thread.

 

The scenario described by Kessler is that the debris of a collision such as Tuesday’s collides with other satellites to produce more debris clouds, which collide with more satellites, and so on in an “ablation cascade”, until Earth orbit is a nearly impenetrable cloud of debris, making artificial satellites and perhaps spaceflight itself so hazardous it’s effectively impossible, ending the space age.

 

Although satellite experts have, in response to this news, stressed that well-know satellites, such as the ISS at an altitude of about 350 km, are at only slight risk of collision with the 2/10/09 debris clouds, they admit that the situation is unprecedented, and speculate that additional Iridium satellites could be lost. IMHO, the best assurance that the Kessler syndrome is not upon us is that there have been several intentional “kinetic kills” of satellites to test anti-satellite weapons, most recently the 1/11/2007 “kill” of a Chinese FY-1C (at 750 kg and 865 km altitude, similar to the Iridium and the Kosmos), have apparently not had dramatic consequences.

 

Still, I’ll be watching for related news and commentary for a while, in the hope that the Kessler Syndrome remains unrealized outside of science fiction.

[freeztar]

Interesting. I had never heard of this before.

 

I certainly hope it's not imminent!

 

Reading the wiki link Craig posted, I found a link to Laser broom. It seems it could, potentially, slowly clean up certain debris. Of course, avoiding any additional debris would be the best option, if possible.