Trent Thompson
ESS 102 AG
October 20, 2017
Space Debris Research Paper (Rough Draft) [Insert synopsis for sci-fi story here] The production of space debris began in 1961, with the explosion of the Transit 4A rocket body in space (Rossi, 2011). Much more space debris has been created since then, and with it came increasing speculation and concern over the problems they might later cause. The first evidence that space debris is a problem took over 30 years to present itself, when in 1996 the first recorded collision between an operational satellite and a piece of space debris occurred. The debris fragment was roughly 10 cm2, and hit the French satellite Cerise at a relative velocity of 14.77 km/s, causing severe damage. The fragment was identified as a piece that came from the explosion of an Ariane rocket that occurred
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When you’re working with satellites in orbit, the scale and distance between everything is so large that it may seem impossible for a collision with anything to occur. But if you put a couple thousand debris fragments in the same relative area and wait long enough, a collision is very likely. While some space debris has fallen back down to Earth over time, the amount overall has steadily risen, and occasionally jumped up drastically. Many believe based on math and current estimations for the total amount of space debris that without the proper intervention towards creating more space debris and the proper action towards the debris already present, we will soon be unable to safely put satellites into orbit or safely get spaceships past our lower atmosphere. There are,