WEBVTT - Space Junk in the Trunk 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:13.960 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.080 My name is Robert Lamb, and my name is Julie Douglas. Julie, 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:19.400 you've been camping before, right, Yes, I have. So you 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:22.000 know the deal. Leave no trades, right, leave nothing behind 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:23.880 you bringing all your stuff, whether you're bringing in a 0:00:23.960 --> 0:00:27.480 backpack or a whole truckload of camping equipment, you need 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:31.040 to leave with only your thing, taking only memories with you, 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.919 and leaving no litter behind, right, I mean, that's that's 0:00:34.920 --> 0:00:37.040 the way it works. You don't just bury all your 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:41.680 pots and pants and then market Well yeah, well, I mean, okay, 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:44.040 if you're coming back at the same camping place, maybe 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:46.239 you could make that argument. But okay, I see, I 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:48.600 see a concept that you're coming up here. But the 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:50.320 whole idea is that we want to be able to 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:53.320 come back to that place and enjoy it in its 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:55.920 natural form without having to put up with a bunch 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.680 of litter and a bunch of garbage changing that environment. Now, 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:02.160 we generinally don't have to worry though about that potter 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:05.440 pan that Julie left behind at the campsite. Traveling at 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.880 immense speeds like five miles per second and smashing through 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:10.920 my crania right, clocking us in the head. I mean, 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:13.960 that's just not a problem here at our campsites on Earth. 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.920 But out there in the in the wild yonder it 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:20.760 is a problem, right, which is directly tied to this 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:23.480 idea of this big sky theory. Right, right, the big 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:25.840 sky theory. I mean, the answer is in the words there, 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.160 big sky. There's a lot of sky, There's a lot 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:31.880 of space. It's huge. We couldn't possibly litter enough to 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:34.640 make space junk a problem, right, That was the old 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:36.200 way of looking at If you have a space mission 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.119 to go up there, solar panel floats off, no big deal, 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.120 there's plenty of room, some nuts and bolts fought in 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.160 the pockets, no big deal. Satellites dead, and I just 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:46.120 leave it there. This big sky theory, we can we 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:49.040 can just leave everything wherever it happens to die and 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:51.760 it'll never be a problem. It'll never come home to roost, 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:56.000 this problem of space junk. Uh. But it is a 0:01:56.040 --> 0:01:59.680 problem that has come home to roost. NASA has tracked 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.360 around on sixteen thousand bits of debris. That's a lot 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.040 measuring over ten sent meters about four inches, but there 0:02:07.080 --> 0:02:09.880 are millions of smaller bits and pieces that are thought 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:12.960 to be swarming up in the cosmos. And the more 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:16.280 we've involved ourselves in orbit and an owner space, the 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.000 more stuff we wind up with up there. Like just 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:21.120 to look at sort of the timeline for this, if 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.280 we look back at two thousand and five, we had 0:02:23.320 --> 0:02:26.520 a catalog of debris up there somewhere in the neighborhood 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:28.760 of ten thousand pieces, and that's just stuff that we 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:32.440 were tracking in New off Specifically, by two thousand ten, 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:35.720 that number had reached fifteen thousand, so it's risen by 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.760 five thousand pieces of space junk. And just that short 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:41.280 amount of time, and fast forward to today, you have 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:44.560 more and more players in the space game, involving themselves 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.320 in the space game and taking that the big sky 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:51.040 approach to space exploration. Well, especially when you get into 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.240 the privatized territory as well, right, this becomes a real issue. 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:58.280 The other issue is that space junk travels at speeds 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:02.639 up to seventeen thousand, five hundred miles per hour, So 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:05.200 that's fast enough for a tiny piece of debris to 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:08.920 damage a satellite or spacecraft it's really big concerned or 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.919 the International Space Station, which we will talk about later, 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:14.760 can finentially set up a chain reaction where you have 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:18.560 one pieces suddenly crashing into another and which causes debris 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.400 to spiral out from that to hit other pieces. In 0:03:21.440 --> 0:03:24.760 many cases we're talking about dead objects hitting other pieces 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.120 of garbage. But then what happens when this stuff collides 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:32.840 with operative telecommunication satellites or exploratory missions or manned missions. 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:35.240 You can see where this becomes a very dangerous problem 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:38.600 very quickly. That's something called cascading collisions. This idea that 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:40.720 things are slamming into each other and just creating more 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.560 and more and more debris. So this has come home 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.360 to roost. And let's talk about back in the day. 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:49.440 Back in the seventies when this was just a theory, 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.240 and a guy named Donald Kessler, who was assigned to 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.920 the Environmental Effects Project Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:00.560 in Houston, became very interested in the craft that was 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.760 abandoned and the void. Yeah, he wrote an important paper 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:07.880 at the time. It's become more important over time. Originally 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:09.280 he was having to really sort of shot on the 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:11.280 mountain to get people to listen to him, But he 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:14.280 wrote a paper called Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites the 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.520 Creation of a good rebelt, and his argument was that 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:20.520 if we and this is early on, everyone else's seems 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.960 to be sticking to this big sky theory. But Kessler says, look, 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:28.000 if we don't start controlling this now, if we don't 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:30.960 start mitigating the problem now, we are going to reach 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.720 a point where we basically have a belt of debris 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.080 around the planet. If you've ever seen the movie Wally, 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.120 the depictions of Earth in that which the Earth is 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:42.840 just so crowded with satellites that for anything to enter 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.159 or exit Or's atmosphere they have to sort of move 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:47.839 things out of the way. That's basically what he's talking about, 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:51.279 except in his scenario, we reach a point with that 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:54.080 to where we are stranded on Earth. Basically we are 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:56.400 suddenly limited by what we can do and what we 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:59.760 can explore in space. We kind of dig our own grave, 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.880 you will, by just clotting our atmosphere with all of 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.520 this junk. Yeah yeah, well not our atmosphere, but our uproar, 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:09.080 right right, I mean, it does constrain our ability to 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.359 explore the universe because it's kind of hard to launch 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:14.000 something and then know that it's going to be taken 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.400 out by a story piece of space junk. But he 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:19.800 was basically saying, look, I estimate this to happen in 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:23.240 the thirty to forty years. Now. This was alarming. It 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.000 really was an eye opener. Even though people like our 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:29.520 thirsty Clark, who actually conceived a communication satellite, had talked 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:31.720 about this in the forties, I believe it was really 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:35.000 Kessler who spent the time looking out at the Cosmos 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.280 and looking through his telescope and saying, Okay, guys, this 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:39.560 is this is real polity. This is a bigger problem 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:43.440 than we thought. His vision of it was very apocular. 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:45.200 Who was who's talking about like a new dark Age? 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.520 Oh yeah he was. Yeah. He was actually saying that 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:49.920 it would take a civilization down to the studs. Yeah, 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:52.120 you know, he's fictioning it up a little bit, but 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:54.440 maybe not too much. You know, that is the idea 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.320 extrapolated to the denth degree. Right, you can take down 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.680 on the communication satellites and you know, all this sort 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:01.200 of technology that we do with today and our life 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:04.200 is predicated on, and you could really sort of fold 0:06:04.279 --> 0:06:07.960 up humanity in the sense. But but we're we're not there. 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:09.800 I do want to say that NASA set up the 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:15.039 Orbital Debris Program Office in response to Cussler's paper, but 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:16.440 I'm not gonna say it's a two. It was a 0:06:16.440 --> 0:06:19.599 toothless organization, but it wasn't It was didn't really seem 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:21.839 like a big concern. It's like, oh, yeah, this could happen, 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:26.600 and it's a theory, let's set a committee and uh, 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:29.320 I mean you know how that yeah, yeah, and the 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:34.120 guidelines they didn't really help to actually reduce space waste. 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:38.320 So here we are, thirty years later, right on time, 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:40.520 two thousand and nine, we have a couple of events 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:44.120 that really usher in this idea that Kessler didn't just 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:46.560 have a theory. It is a syndrome. And that's why 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:49.320 it's called custlers. Yeah. February ten, two thousand nine, we 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:52.719 had two satellites, Iridium thirty three, which is flying north 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.040 relaying a phone conversations. And then there was this long 0:06:56.120 --> 0:07:01.480 retired Russian communication satellite called Cosmos and it's just tumbling 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:04.239 east and an uncontrolled orbit. So you have an active 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:08.480 satellite and an inactive satellite and then they collide. And 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:10.120 this was not even a collision that was on the 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:12.560 forecast because at this time we knew some of the 0:07:12.560 --> 0:07:14.160 stuff that was going on there and we can sort 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.520 of excrapolate what might run into what what time. But 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:20.640 this wasn't even scheduled to happen, if you will. They 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.239 just ram into each other and of course just completely 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:25.559 annihilate each other, and they create all these other pieces 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.320 of debris. Right, they smashed into something like a two 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.960 thousand one pieces. And this is over the Siberian tundra. 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:35.480 And although it doesn't really affect us too much, I 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:37.880 mean I think there's some drop calls from this one collision. Right, 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:40.600 the fact of the matter is, again, this debris, this 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.680 cloud of debris was created, and we know that that 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:46.320 begets even more and more debris. And it was a 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:48.920 big wake up call. And according to wire dot com 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:52.000 Evan L. Schwartz great article in this he said that 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.880 each chard an orbiting cannonball capable of destroying yet another 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:59.120 hunk of high priced hardware. That's the real problem there, Yeah, 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.000 I mean expense going into any of these satellites, communications 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:05.440 or otherwise. So the idea that you just have junk 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:09.000 up there that could conceivably just wipe it out. People 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:11.920 suddenly started taking even more notice following this two thousand 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.480 and nine event. Yep, So pretty soon in a military 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.120 unit called the Space Surveillance Network was set up. They 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.720 began to monitor the debris by They were looking at 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:24.600 one thousand active satellites, three thousand, seven hundred inactive satellites 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:28.640 and rocket pieces, and another fifteen thousand, three hundred objects 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.160 the size of a fist or larger. And these numbers 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:34.320 started to bear out this idea that we could have 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:38.360 maybe seventy five collisions a day, and that doesn't include 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.080 the half million smaller pieces of debris the size of 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.040 a marble or larger, all of which is again capable 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:47.360 of just wiping out satellites or you know, other things 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:50.360 that are very valuable to us. Another key incident that happened, 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:52.480 and this is just a few months after the Cosmos 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.240 Iridium collision, and I think I imagine most of you 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:57.320 remember this. I remember it because working here at how 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.760 stuff works and anything news the inside I see that happens. 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:03.360 We suddenly latch onto a bit and this was big 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:06.280 news because two thousand nine, suddenly there's an object, piece 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:10.200 of space junk headed towards the International Space Station. So 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:13.920 this is an immensely expensive piece of equipment here. We're 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:16.840 talking in excess of a hundred billion dollars worth of equipment, 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.160 human beings on board, a lot invested in this. This 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:23.480 is part of our space legacy moving forward. And there's 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:25.920 a piece of junk headed towards it that could conceivably 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:28.760 white it all out. So we have to rush everybody 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:32.840 on board into essentially a lifeboat kind of a panic room, 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.400 right yeah, because they're like, all right, we might miss us, 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:37.240 but it might hit you, and if it hits us, 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:39.680 we're gonna have to somehow save you, guys. So get 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:41.920 into this lifeboat and want to see what happens. Now, 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.000 Luckily it missed by a few miles, but it's still 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:47.240 in the vasts of space. I mean, that's like shaving 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:48.920 off a little piece of hair on your head there. 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:51.240 And it was like a couple of months after that, 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:56.080 another piece of space junk hurled towards the International Space Station, 0:09:56.160 --> 0:09:59.560 this time missing them by just a mile. And this 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:01.920 frag meant would have had an impact equal to a 0:10:01.960 --> 0:10:04.120 truck bomb. In fact, I've got a quote here from 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:06.560 Jack Bacon, he's a senior NASA scientist. He says, a 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.079 ten centimeter sphere of aluminum would be like seven kilograms 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:13.240 of T and T it would blow everything to smith rings. 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:15.439 I mean, we can shield these things to a certain degree. 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:18.400 There's a project at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:22.760 where they basically take chunks of plastic and basically space 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.080 junk and they just fire them at shields and panels 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:28.800 to see exactly what the damages. And they're able to determine. 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:31.120 Within a certain size of space junk, they can sort 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.680 of shield something out. But when you're getting these larger pieces, 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.760 it becomes increasingly impossible to create a space vessel or 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:41.480 a satellite. They could withstand that kind of damage, right, right, 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:44.000 especially when you're talking about delicate of material such as 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.600 solar of cells. Yeah, and just to give everybody an 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:48.319 idea too, I mean we're talking again. I think you 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:51.640 talked about this, some tools or some nuts and bolts, 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.400 that kind of space junk to the size of rocket stages, 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:59.880 the size of school buses. There's an immense variety of 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.800 based junk up there. Now. One might ask doesn't all 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.040 this stuff eventually just fall into the Earth's atmosphere and 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:08.280 burn up, because that was part of the big sky 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:10.240 theory as well, that all right, if we'll leave something 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:12.240 up there, it's not gonna be a problem. And b 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:14.559 it's eventually just going to drift down and re enter 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.800 the Earth atmosphere and probably burn up and or land 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:19.840 in the middle of nowhere or more likely in the 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:24.320 middle of the ocean somewhere, which is what most reinering does. Occasionally, 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.199 something will fall on somebody's backyard and it's a local 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:29.960 news story, front page for the next five years. But 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:31.960 for the most part, yes, that's true, it just falls 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.720 in the middle of nowhere. But it can take decades 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.360 for something in orbit to actually re enter the atmosphere, 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:40.640 which is why you still have some of the original 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:42.520 satellites that went up there. I mean, they're all still 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.080 up there and again, and not all of them burn 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.720 up upon re entry, right, because it depends on the size, right, Right, 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:50.959 depends on the size of rocket stage. The size of 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:53.760 school bus isn't necessarily going to burn up there. So 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.600 we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.600 we're going to talk about this idea of how we 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.960 can in teen space junk and getting our janitorial services 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:10.400 up there and taking care of it. All Right, we're back. 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:12.040 I want to throw out another quick fact. This is 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:15.400 from the Wired article you mentioned earlier. But nineteen sixty 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:18.439 two that's when the kel Star one satellite relaid the 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:21.680 first phone call and TV signals across the Atlantic and 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:24.320 ended up failing the next year. So nine three this 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:28.079 thing dies. It's still up there, just up there doing nothing, 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.600 just a big piece of space junk floating around. And 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:33.760 and in the decades since, of course, we've rolled out 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:35.280 more and more stuff. Just to give you a little 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:37.640 idea about how we end up with that huge number 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:40.480 of fifteen thousand plot well, now it's up to sixteen 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.080 thousand pieces of space jump. Yeah. I mean it's really 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:45.200 hard to actually keep tabs on anyway, because, as we 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:47.240 talked about, it's you know, you have some particles that 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.240 are so small that you can't even really engage them 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:52.600 or track them. I should say. Another incident that kind 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:54.800 of woke everyone up to the dangers and the problems 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:58.200 posted by space Junk of January eleven, two thousand seven, 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:01.760 the Chinese government stayed this demonstration of its military might 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:04.400 by basically shooting down or not really shooting down, but 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:07.400 blowing up one of its retired satellites with something called 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.840 a kinetic kill vehicle, so to demonstrate that they had 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:12.400 the potential to take out a satellite, which in a 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.840 military scenario would be very valuable if you satellite our 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.680 keys to tall communication networks, to our ability to get 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:22.920 strategic information about what an enemy is doing. And they 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.679 were demonstrating, yes, we can take these out satellite killing technology. 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:29.280 I mean, that's that's been on the military playlist for 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.000 some time now. But they demonstrate this. They blow up 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.120 this old satellite. Big deal, right, They're just shooting some 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.240 junk in the backyard. There are people out in the 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:38.920 sticks that do that every day. But when they shot 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:42.719 this thing, it blasted into three thousand trackable pieces. That's 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:46.640 just trackable pieces, but three thousands. So one military demonstration later, 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.200 that number we have that tally of measurable space junk 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:53.160 up there rises by three thousand pieces. Yeah, I mean 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:56.040 it was a total jerk move. I mean it's really irresponsible, 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:58.600 knowing what we know to a certain degree now. But 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:01.320 the problem with this is six percent of the pieces 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:04.480 have re entered the atmosphere. And here's the interesting thing. 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:08.240 Half of those pieces came down in the last twelve months, 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:12.679 and this has to do with increased solar activity, which 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:15.440 normally we kind of it's not something we get really 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.480 excited about in terms of like, yeah, increased solar activity. 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:22.760 This idea of solar maximum or peak activity could actually 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:24.760 be a boon to us in terms of cleaning up 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.080 space junk. Right, the Sun, as we've mentioned before, is 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.760 pumping out energy. It's pumping out energy of the Earth, 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:33.240 and some of this is shielded by our electromagnetic field, 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:35.680 but the rest of it actually reaches the Earth. Powers 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:37.400 the Earth gives us a lot of the stuff we need, 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:39.440 and if we have all the space junk floating around 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.560 out there, an increase in that solar activity can stir 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.200 things up a bit. Yeah. In fact, if we've got 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:48.120 these solar players in these kernal mass ejections, which by 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:50.280 the way, when I talk about this solar maximum, this 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.240 peak activity is eleven year period that is going to 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:56.880 come to fruition in I believe in terms of the 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:02.040 ultimate amount of solar activity. So I think of it 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:04.680 as blasting the atmosphere with heat with these solar players 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.320 and coronal mass ejections from you know, sort of raining 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.520 upon the Earth's atmosphere. This causes the atmosphere to expand, 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:14.880 and this expansion pushes some of the gas to higher altitudes, 0:15:14.920 --> 0:15:19.800 which creates drag on orbiting space debris that causes it 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:22.640 to slow down. And then as the debris slows down 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:25.560 or gravity pulls it to the lower altitudes where the 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.520 atmosphere is even thicker. So then you get even more drag, right, 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:31.960 and then you get slower debris. So eventually debris re 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.440 enters the atmosphere sooner than it would without the solar influence. 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:38.160 And here's here's the good news. It burns up safely 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:40.840 for the most part. So that's why we've seen such 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:45.160 an influx of that Chinese satellite that those pieces coming in. 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:48.800 So there's this idea that the Sun could actually be 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.200 very helpful at least until when it when it reaches 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.600 its peak capacity or maximum output in the eleven year 0:15:56.640 --> 0:16:00.640 period and helping us to keep taps on this of it. Okay, 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:04.520 so we're keeping tabs, we've been keeping tabs. Occasionally the 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:08.840 Sun might accidentally help out sort of solar hoovering. Yeah, 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.240 but what else are we doing, right, that's the big question. 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:13.840 We can exercise a little bit of forethought in the 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:16.800 way we plan missions and uh, you know, moving forward. 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:18.520 But there's still a lot of junk up there. What 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:21.360 are we doing give anything to clean it up? Well, 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:25.720 there's something called the Swiss Janitor satellite. This comes to 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:29.640 us from the Swiss Space Center at EPFL and that's 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:32.520 the launch of the clean Space one. This was back 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:35.520 in February, I believe, and it's a project that developed 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:37.640 and built the first installment of a family of what 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.920 they see as satellites that are especially designed to clean 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.600 up space debris. And the idea is to launch a 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:48.080 small grabber spacecraft to chase after orbiting pieces of space junk, 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.720 and then it'll attach itself to it de orbit and 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.400 the whole Incholado then re enters the atmosphere where it 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.400 burns up on re entry. There are a few other 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:59.800 plans to that involve basically micro satellites are many satellites 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:03.760 that around and essentially net this stuff up and kind 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:06.359 of form like not really a Katamari ball, but they 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:08.640 form a nice big sack of space traction then bring 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.720 it back to the atmosphere to Another tactic that we've 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.480 been using is making sure that we take retiring spacecraft 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:17.320 up to a graveyard orbit so that we know they're 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:19.239 going out of commission. Well, let's move them into an 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:21.639 orbit where they're not going to be interfering with anything. 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.240 It's actually active, okay, So just sort of pushing it 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.959 away from us a little bit more, right in the 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:29.280 same way that you move your junk car into the 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:31.920 backyard as opposed to leaving it in the front yard. 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:34.159 It's still there, you just can't see it from the 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.320 street right right, house values go up. There's this idea 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:39.760 of using little puffs of gas that I kind of like. 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:42.080 It's just from a team from the University of Michigan, 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:46.919 and they're thinking about using pulses of gas fired into 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:50.200 the path of debris and this would increase again the 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:54.240 drag on orbiting space junk, leaving it to plunge downward 0:17:54.480 --> 0:17:58.120 into the Earth's atmosphere, and the pulses themselves would leave 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.200 no no trace. So there we get our our boy 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.760 scouts creta there, and it also leaves no solid material 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:07.680 in orbit. Another really interesting tactic that NASA is pretty 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:10.600 excited about comes from Tether's Unlimited. This is a Seattle 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.800 area space contractor and they've been working on this idea 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:15.679 for years. But their idea is to create this thing 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:18.240 called a wrestler, which is a mid sized vehicle about 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:21.560 four hundred pounds, and it piggybacks a ride on other satellites. 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:24.280 So it so the idea here is, let's cut some corners. 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:26.360 It'll just hit your ride with some sort of big 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:30.560 price e corporat or national supported telecommunication satellite launch or 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:33.400 or mission launch. And then once up there, it's saying 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.480 to pull off this really neat tethering technique. So it 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:38.840 goes into orbit and it sidles up to this piece 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:42.640 of space junk and it detaches an electrodynamic tether. This 0:18:42.720 --> 0:18:46.520 is a wire mesh tail. It's up to six miles long, 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:48.919 and then it shoots an amp of current through that 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.840 material and this current interacts with the Earth's magnetic field, 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:54.720 producing a drag effect that lowers the debris towards the 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:57.160 atmosphere and re entry. Yeah, and that one's really cool 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.440 because that seems pretty promising in the perspective of gathering 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:02.720 up debris, but not only that, just being able to 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.399 afford it. I think that was estimated somewhere in the 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:10.119 tens of millions whereas some of the other ideas and 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.879 projects we're talking in the billions. Yeah, they're saying this 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:15.719 one would just to do a test mission, mind you, 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:17.760 that would take out a few tons of trash, would 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.800 be tens of millions of dollars, which which again puts 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:24.600 this whole problem into perspective. Like like so many problems 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:29.360 that humans get themselves into on a personal or national scale, 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:32.240 you don't work on a problem early enough, it ends 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:35.399 up costing you far more later on, and it reaches 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:37.200 a point where you have to either pay that bill 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:40.920 or just be content with sticking where you are. Well. 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:42.479 And this is the kind of problem too, is just 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:44.440 like your house if you don't necessarily want to put 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:46.960 all your money into, you know, redoing the roof, but 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.439 you have to write because otherwise you're going to be 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:51.600 explicit to the elements. But that's not the cool thing 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:54.000 you see from the street. Same thing with Nassa's like, 0:19:54.280 --> 0:19:56.880 that's not our flashy cool stuff. It really do need 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:58.679 to take care of the space chunk. The problem is 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:01.439 that they don't necessarily have a gigantic budget in the 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:03.639