The United States, Russia and China are leaders in the pollution of near-Earth space with space debris, according to the published theses of the article prepared for the "King's Readings" by the staff of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University.
"The mass of debris (in 2017, this mass is about 7.2 thousand tons) in orbit continues to grow - over the past three years, it has grown every year by about 100 tons, or about 2%," the scientists write.
“The United States is the leader in terms of space debris, Russia is in second place, and China is in third. These countries account for 93% of space debris. Its total volume increases annually by four percent,”the thesis says.
Most of all space debris is formed due to the destruction and collision of orbiters. In addition, the orbit is littered with spent stages and booster blocks of launch vehicles, already inoperative satellites, and fragments that have come off during launches.
“As of 2017, there are about 18 thousand objects in orbit over 10 centimeters, including 1200 satellites, 750 thousand“flying bullets”(the size of each“bullet”is about a centimeter) and about 150 million very small fragments, the size of which less than a millimeter,”the document says.
Experts remind that if in near-earth space the debris sooner or later slows down, falls and mostly burns up in the atmosphere, then in geostationary orbit they can spin forever. Experts warn that collisions with space debris can have dangerous consequences.
“Recently, more and more scientists are concerned about the so-called Kessler syndrome. This is a hypothetical development of events in near-earth orbit, when space debris, which appeared as a result of numerous launches of artificial satellites, makes the near space completely unusable for practical use,”the thesis says.
The article discusses the types of space debris, methods of dealing with it, and also evaluates the effectiveness of using these methods.
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