Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Threat of Military Space Debris

Episode Date: June 6, 2005

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The dangers of space junk, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. As if there isn't already enough trash in Earth orbit, now there is growing concern about satellite-destroying debris that could result from use of anti-satellite weapons. We'll talk about the problem with Michael Crapen, head of the Stimson Center's Space Security Project, along with a possible solution. Here's the news from around the solar system this week. Space Shuttle Discovery is still

in the giant Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. It should by now have been mated to its replacement external tank, making it almost ready to roll back out to the launch pad. NASA has given the go-ahead for the Phoenix mission to Mars. The long-armed lander will lift off in 2007, headed for the far north of the planet. As Mars Exploration Rover Spirit finds more and more evidence of past water in Gusev Crater, Opportunity is making excruciatingly slow progress getting itself out of the sand dune it has been stuck in. Principal Investigator Steve Squires is confident the rover will be back rolling across the plains of Mars in a few weeks. Meanwhile, scientists think they've solved a 150-year-old

mystery about the red planet's off-center South Pole ice cap. You can read about both of these stories at planetary.org. Coming up, a status report on Cosmos 1, the solar sail, from project head Lou Friedman. Please, please also stay tuned for one of the silliest What's Up segments yet from Bruce Betts and yours truly. We're having fun now. Here's Emily. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, Can one Mars orbiter take a picture of another? The Mars Global Surveyor mission has just released two such images.

Mars Global Surveyor had already captured photos of many of the Mars landers, both Mars Exploration Rovers, both Viking landers, and probably the failed Mars polar lander. Snapshots of orbiters are harder because they move very fast. But in April of this year, Mars Global Surveyor managed to capture images of both of the other two spacecraft that are currently orbiting Mars, NASA's Mars Odyssey and ESA's Mars Express. These images are incredibly cool, but how are they useful to scientists? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out.

We know a lot of our listeners are wondering, following what's going on with the solar sail, probably visiting the website. If you're not, you may want to try that, planetary.org. There's a whole special section on the solar sail. But we did want to bring in the head of the program as well for a brief status report. So Lou Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, rejoins us. Lou, how's it going? Glad to be here, Matt. And it's going very well. In fact, you know, our launch takes place out in the Barents Sea, north of the Arctic Circle, and not even the team gets to witness it. It's on a Russian Navy submarine from below the surface, and it's a Navy operation,

so very, very limited contact with the launch information. It'll all be through the mission control area in Moscow and then relayed here to the Pasadena control area we have at the Planetary Society. And then we'll put the information up on the web. So the best we can do is provide updates and the website is going to be the best place to follow the mission. So where are we now? The spacecraft is at the submarine base. The spacecraft has just reached the submarine, the launch area in Severmorsk, near the larger city of Murmansk on the Barents Sea. It will go through two weeks of checkout, and then it will be loaded on top of the rocket and taken out to sea.

So the spacecraft's a done deal at this point, and we're very proud that we've gotten this far. It's already quite an achievement to have built the world's first solar sail spacecraft and to be taking it to the launch area. But now we have an intense several-week period with our team to prepare for mission operations. All of the things that go into tracking the spacecraft, to receiving the telemetry, to being able to send commands in case we want to change any of the onboard sequences to get the real orbit, not just the planned orbit.

So there's a lot of intense work going on right now in Russia and in the United States among all of the people at the ground stations, the tracking areas, and the mission operations areas to be able to handle the data and handle the commands to the spacecraft. I think one of the most interesting stories is the tracking network that the Planetary Society has been able to organize with a lot of cooperation. Yes, it is quite amazing because this is all special for our mission. We're using two Russian tracking stations near Moscow,

one of which hasn't been used for many years except on a single satellite in the UHF band. We have the Czech Republic station at Panskov S. And then we have one at Berkeley, the University of California, Berkeley, and one from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, in Fairbanks. So those are the main tracking stations. In addition, we'll have two portable stations for the first orbit because those take, we want to get some critical data while it's over the ocean as well. So we have put together a network. Again, you can see it up here on our website and a map of the tracking stations here on our website.

Thanks very much, Lou. That's Lou Friedman, the head of the Cosmos 1 solar sail project with a status report. Of course, we're going to continue to follow the progress of the solar sail here on Planetary Radio, just as we will on the website, with that launch now two weeks or less away. I'll be back in just a moment with a conversation about the militarization of space and the hazard that could present for other things that are up there right after this. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system.

That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in the planetary report the planetary report is the society's full color magazine it's just one of many member benefits you can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS that's toll free 1-877-752-6387 And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments

at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Anyone who has seen the latest Star Wars movie has also seen the violent creation of massive amounts of space junk. What about the real thing? Could much more limited and primitive military action in Earth orbit generate lethal debris? That's one of the questions examined by the Space Security Project at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.

Michael Crapen is co-founder and president emeritus of the center and director of this project. Michael, your own material mentions that the United States did the last testing of space weaponry 20 years ago, 1985. Why is this topic resurfacing now? It's resurfacing for a number of reasons. The United States is now extraordinarily dependent on satellites, more so than ever before in our history, for our military, for commerce, and for civil society. reason is that the Bush administration and the Pentagon have determined that the same national security policies that, in their view, serve the country's interests on the ground ought to be

applied to space. And that means that you don't wait to be hit. You don't wait to suffer severe severe damage, you react and preempt to gathering or imminent threats. And for space, this means to develop the capacity for what the Pentagon calls offensive counter-space systems. For you and I, that basically means space weapons. Now, our listeners know that we rarely, if ever, deal with defense issues, much less politically controversial issues, except those related to space exploration. This issue certainly has elements of all of those, but it actually is pretty closely tied. As you establish in a little booklet, a report that you've published, Space Security or Space Weapons, one of the elements of this debate has a lot to do with damage that could take place, not intentionally, but because of either the testing or the actual use of space weaponry,

because those effects are not likely to be limited just to the target of that test or action. Well, that's right, Matt. Space warfare is going to produce debris, and debris kills indiscriminately in space. It doesn't recognize friend or foe. It doesn't recognize a military mission and distinguish it from the space shuttle or the space station or from planetary exploration that must go through a debris field.

Debris is a killer. And the Pentagon knows that, which is why the Pentagon has the preference of engaging in these activities, if need be, by using temporary or reversible effects, non-destructive effects. But it's awfully hard to dictate the rules of warfare in space just as it is on the ground. Your report mentions that while the United States may have a clear advantage in space, technological and otherwise, that creating these kinds of weapons, and maybe not weapons that are quite as targeted or, well, benign is the wrong word, but with the localized effects that the Pentagon may want, that other countries have the capability for building weapons and they may not be so discriminating. Matt, all you need is a medium-range ballistic missile, so an extended-range Scud missile. The missiles that North Korea has been peddling around the world, for example, can get a country into space. can get a country into space.

And once there, you can throw out gravel, marbles. You don't need a very sophisticated device to do damage to space. Of course, if you use a nuclear weapon in low Earth orbit, you can kill or damage a whole lot. And we've learned that because the United States, back in 1962, when we were still testing in the atmosphere, messed up, I think, every single satellite. There weren't many that were up there in 62. I think we killed or damaged five satellites. Inadvertently, it was a very big test. It was a test of over one megaton in the atmosphere.

And we messed up our satellites. We messed up a British satellite. And I think, although Moscow's not talking about it, we messed up one of their satellites, too. And this was because of the infamous electromagnetic pulse that basically wipes out unprotected electronics? Satellites weren't meant to survive that kind of radiation and other weapons of sex. Now, we are trying, and others presumably are trying, to do better at this, but there's just so much you can do.

Looking at the level that is far less destructive than a nuclear weapon in space, but still, as you said, basically throwing up a handful of gravel or marbles, this is not just speculative. You have in this booklet available from the Stimson Center this pretty well-known photo of what a paint flake did to the space shuttle's windshield. Yeah. Well, your listeners can go to NASA's website. There's an orbital debris quarterly newsletter on this. The effects of debris in space against the shuttle are pretty well known. In one shuttle mission in 1999, the Discovery landed with evidence of 64 impacts. Wow. Ten of those were caused by man-made debris.

Wow. Ten of those were caused by man-made debris. The shuttle's window panes need to be repeatedly replaced on these missions, and some tiles do as well because of debris hits. The International Space Station has to be moved on the average of once a year to avoid a debris hit. And the reason is pretty simple, because a marble-sized piece of debris in low Earth orbit is traveling at about 10 times the speed of a rifle bullet. So you can just imagine the kind of impact that would cause. In fact, we can all visualize this because we all have in our mind's eye that image of the shuttle that took a debris hit as it was launching.

And, of course, the effects of that were not felt immediately, but they sure were felt in a tragic way upon reentry. We're talking with Michael Crapon. He's the co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., and is also the project director for something the Stimson Center calls the Space Security Project. Now, I know that the Stimson Center, your project, security project. Now, I know that the Stimson Center, your project, in addition to analyzing the challenge here, has also made some recommendations, including a code of conduct in space. Well, the old-fashioned way of doing this was for the nations of the world to gather in Geneva and spend a decade or so negotiating a lowest common denominator international convention.

And I don't think this problem can wait that long. And in fact, many space-faring nations are taking steps to mitigate the debris that's created just through natural space activity. And one part of our code of conduct is to standardize and globalize debris mitigation techniques, the best debris mitigation techniques, because there's already 3,500 tons of space debris up there. because there's already 3,500 tons of space debris up there. And it's increasing at a rate of about 150 tons per year. Now, what are we talking about? We're talking about fragments of rocket bodies or paint chips or nuts and bolts. And, you know, all kinds of things happen, including the breakup of satellites over time.

Now, over time in low Earth orbit, debris does come to land. Yeah, as the orbits decay. As the orbits decay, we get these amazing visuals. But you still have at least temporary problems in low Earth orbit. But you still have at least temporary problems in low Earth orbit. And, of course, in geosynchronous orbit, the debris problem is, in effect, a permanent one, a timeless one. So the Code of Conduct goes beyond dealing with the potential negative effects of military action in space to deal with just doing business up there. And that, in fact, doing business up there has become very, very important to all of humanity.

To ambulances that have GPS units that need to get to somebody in need as quickly as possible and get back to the hospital as quickly as possible. Police cruisers, doctors with cell phones and pagers. I mean, financial transactions, getting gas at the pump. There are so many daily transactions that now depend on space. And our armed forces that are in harm's way, working under terrible conditions, in harm's way, working under terrible conditions, without sufficient backup, absolutely require satellite help to protect themselves and to find their adversaries, and if need be, to target them with a minimum of collateral damage.

So we're totally dependent on satellites. The military benefits of satellites are completely connected with the protection of all satellites. And so in our code of conduct, we don't distinguish between steps related to military use of space and civil or commercial uses of space. and civil or commercial uses of space. For example, if we want space-faring nations to improve their standards to mitigate space debris, and on the other hand, we say it's okay to flight test and deploy space weapons, we have a fundamental contradiction on our hands. So it all ties together.

Michael, we're out of time. Can you tell people where they can learn more about the Space Security Project? They can go to www.stimson.org. Michael, thank you so much for joining us for a few minutes here. We appreciate that you were willing to share the findings of the Space Security Project with us on Planetary Radio. I'm grateful to you, too. Michael Crapone is the co-founder and president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to taking pragmatic steps toward ideal objectives. And we will put the link to their website where you can find information about the Space

Security Project on our website, perhaps right where you have linked to this radio show and are listening to it now. I'll be back in just a moment with Bruce Betts and What's Up and this week's space trivia contest right after this return visit from Emily. return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla back with Q&A. Mars Global Surveyor has snapped several pictures of Mars landers and now both of the other Mars orbiters. How are these pictures useful? Images of landers are very important because they help to link the data acquired by orbital and landed missions. For instance, we now understand the geology of Opportunity's landing site very well,

but in order for the mission to aid in our understanding of Mars' general geology, it is extremely important to know where Opportunity's detailed measurements were taken. With the precise location of Opportunity on Mars Global Surveyor's orbital images, Opportunity's detailed science results can be generalized to much broader regions of Mars. But how do images of orbiters help science? Actually, there's very little useful science or engineering data that can be retrieved from these images. Still, the photos are tremendously cool. Usually, once an orbiter leaves the Earth, we never see it again. Actually seeing it at Mars

is exciting. These pictures are like treasured photos of our children going out into the world. Space missions are supposed to educate us, but they are also supposed to excite and inspire us, too, and Mars Global Surveyor's pictures of Mars Odyssey and Mars Express do just that. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. So here's Bruce Batts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society, who will proceed to tell us what's up. Welcome. Hey, thank you. Good planets up there in the sky

still, and they're coming together. I'm just going to keep annoying you every week, telling you about how Saturn and Venus and Mercury in the sky are coming together. They were clustered within 1.5 degrees of each other on June 25th. But even now, Mercury is starting to poke its little head up over the horizon just after sunset. Astrologers around the world are running in excited circles with their hands waving in the air. I'm sure of it. Slamming into each other, falling down, and hurting themselves. I wish we had pictures.

But back to astronomy. You can see Venus shortly after sunset. You can see Venus in the shortly after sunset. You can see all of these looking in the west. And Saturn is the highest at the moment and the dimmest but still looking like a bright star near Castor and Pollux. Venus, the brightest

star-like object in the sky, can't miss it low in the west. And Mercury, really tough to see for the next week or so, but starting to come up below Venus will also look like a bright star and watch them grow together in the night sky as perceived by we humans here on earth now also you've got Jupiter up high in the sky brightest star like object up high in the sky and in the evening sky and then Mars in the southeast looking reddish before dawn and if you dig watching the moon pass by these things, we've got the crescent moon by Venus

on June 7th and 8th, and Saturn on June 9th, and Jupiter on June 15th. I was just thinking of how many years it's been since I looked reddish before dawn. It's been a long time, and I'm glad to be able to say that, too. So anyway, there's also for you amateur, hardcore amateur astronomers out there, don't miss Comet Tempel 1, which is now visible but around ninth magnitude. For you playing in that arena, you'll need a decent amateur telescope and be looking for it. You can find many sites on the web that will tell you where to look. And the interesting thing about Tempel 1 is it's about to get a visitor on July 3rd or 4th.

Depending on your time zone, the Deep Impact spacecraft will release a 400-pound copper impactor to slam into it at 10 kilometers per second. Don't miss this planetary smackdown. Be there and be at the Planetary Society's Comet Bash 2005 on the evening of July 3rd in the Pasadena area. And you can find out more on our website. If you are going to be in Southern California, come check us out and witness the whole event live. So comet-smacking party. It is. It'll be a comet-smacking party. It's 10 kilometers per second.

We're making a hole in a comet, or at least an impact crater in a comet. Also, come to our website. Guess how big that impact crater will be, and you can win really cool prizes. I was going to say, that's the big question, right? How big a hole will it be? It is the big question, and it will tell us a lot about it. And also, of course, they'll be doing observations. The whole science concept here is penetrate through the outer shell, which is probably highly modified to see what's really deep down forming most of the comet. On to this week in space history. 20 years ago, on June 10, 1985, the Soviet Vega-1 spacecraft deployed an atmospheric probe,

which then deployed a balloon in the Venus atmosphere that traveled successfully for 48 hours, roughly, and traveled some 6,000 miles returning data. So one of those missions a lot of people not highly aware of, but kind of cool, balloons in the atmosphere of Venus. Nice proving ground for what some people would like to do on Mars, right? It's true. A rather different environment, however. It should be easier on Mars.

No, it should be a lot harder on Mars. Okay, never mind. Mars' much thinner atmosphere need big giant balloons or blimps or other things. Venus, so thick that you can float, you know, you'd float in the Venus atmosphere. I was just thinking so much less sulfuric acid to deal with, but anyway. Of course, you wouldn't actually float in the Venus atmosphere. I just wanted to make that clear. So don't try that at home.

Darn. Okay, moving on to the random space fact space fact i love this i love this one this is so cool the surface gravity of mercury and mars is nearly identical is that right whoa you say that's because because mercury must be really dense mercury is really dense it's it's quite dense has that iron core and so so despite having less mass, it does have a similar surface gravity. Also, it has a smaller radius, which helps with the gravity, but you need that

extra density, which it does compared to Mars. It's much closer in density to Earth, because of all that iron. Well, I join you in your enthusiasm. Oh, thank you very much. Let's be just as enthusiastic about the trivia contest. Let's go on to the trivia contest. What are we asking, Matt?

It's about sunspots. You wanted to know why. Why are sunspots cooler? Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Or dark. Oh, no, no, no. Glad I didn't do that a couple weeks ago.

Yes. Why are sunspots dark, Matt? Who told us and what they went? A lot of people told us and had fun with this. And our winner, interestingly, because, you know, we do choose these randomly, is Yanni Lindstrom. Yanni Lindstrom, who said, I hope I win my first entry into the contest. Well, guess what, Yanni?

He says he's been a fan of the show for a long time now, and he did get it right. Sunspots look dark because they are cooler than the rest of the surface of the sun, which is not to say they're cool. No, they're still 3,000 or 4,000 kelvins, but they are cooler than the average surface temperature of nearly 6,000 kelvins and therefore radiate less light. And so in comparison, look dark. Let me tell you something else that's really cool about Yanni. He says he's hoping to watch the launch of Cosmos 1 since he's only about 1,500 kilometers from Murmansk, which is near the submarine base.

Excellent. So he's in Finland. He is in Finland. I didn't say that, did I? Yanni lives in Finland. Okay. And for the rest of you around the world, try to win your solar sail poster. Go to planetary.org slash radio and find out how to answer the following question.

Who was the first child born of parents who had both flown to space? At least give the first name of the child and who the parents were, or the full name of the child. I'm more interested in were they on the same mission and was this child born less than nine months after that mission, if you know what I mean, nudge, nudge. No, actually, I don't, Matt. What do you mean? Oh, okay, okay.udge No, actually I don't, Matt What do you mean?

Oh, okay, okay So anyway, we about done there, Matt? I guess it would be exactly nine months When do they need to have that in there, Matt? Oh, you mean the deadline? Yeah, the deadline Is it nine months from now or is it sooner? No, no, it's much, much sooner

June 13 at 2 p.m. Pacific time Is that the gestation period of the trivia contest? I suppose so Never thought about it that way Okay This is a particularly silly what's up, isn't it? 2 p.m. Pacific time. Is that the gestation period of the trivia contest? I suppose so. Never thought about it that way. This is a particularly silly what's up, isn't it? It is. It is indeed.

All right, everybody, go out there. Look up in the night sky and think about what the gestation period of your brain is. Thank you, and good night. Not long enough in my case. Obviously still premature. He's Bruce Betts, the director of Projects for the Planetary Society, and he joins us each week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society. We hope you'll be here for our next jaunt around the solar system,

including a solar sail update. Have a great week, everyone.