Text fwd: Orbital Junkyard Just Might Trap Us

Fwd by Tim Rinne

Omaha World-Herald
Monday, February 23, 2009
Midlands Voices: Orbital junkyard just might trap us

BY TIM RINNE
*The writer, of Lincoln, is state coordinator of Nebraskans for Peace.*

Nearly 500 miles above Earth, the calm was suddenly disrupted Feb. 10 when a U.S. satellite collided with a derelict Russian orbiter at 26,000 mph. The impact created two expanding clouds of debris with hundreds of orbital fragments.

Initial reports indicated that the debris clouds posed no immediate threat to the International Space Station. But the space station is hardly the only thing up there that we need to worry about.

Iridium, the U.S. corporation that owned the now-pulverized satellite, operates a constellation of 66 such craft providing global telecommunications services. And Iridium is just one corporation in one industry in one country.

Space is now home to almost a thousand commercial and military satellites with a dozen different sponsors such as Russia, China, the United States, the European Union, Japan, India and — just this past month — Iran.

Space, in fact, has been the handmaid of economic globalization. It has become our economic stock-in-trade. And any physical threat to these fragile (and expensive) space assets is, accordingly, taken very seriously by the world’s spacefaring nations.

Understandably unhappy about this space pileup, Russia blamed NASA for failing to warn Iridium about the collision course its satellite was on. Tracking space objects, however, is not in fact NASA’s job.

That’s the responsibility of the U.S. Strategic Command, through its Space Surveillance Network.

Almost two years ago, at the inaugural Space and Telecom Law Conference sponsored by the University of Nebraska College of Law, then-StratCom commander Gen. James Cartwright publicly discussed the challenges of trying to track the 17,000 space objects it’s assigned to watch.

Already then, he voiced concern about the magnitude of the round-the-clock task of directing satellite traffic and dodging space junk. The satellite collision has only added to StratCom’s worries.

StratCom is not to be blamed for this accident. But this latest crash should send a message to the White House and the Pentagon that it’s high time to change course on U.S. space policy if we are to have any hope of preventing future collisions.

For more than 20 years, the United States has been pretty much the only nation on Earth refusing to support the annual U.N. resolution on the “Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space” (PAROS). Virtually every other country — including Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan — is on record supporting the PAROS call to negotiate a new treaty to stop the militarization of the heavens and

to preserve space for peace.

Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States has refused to vote for the resolution and commence negotiations because of the military and economic space superiority we enjoyed. Wanting to protect that advantage, the White House and Pentagon have steadfastly opposed any new treaties respecting space.

But the world as we know it is shifting over our heads. Both Russia and China now possess anti-satellite technology. Iran has just launched its first satellite. Beyond the growing military challenges to U.S. space dominance, there’s the omnipresent threat of space accidents — of more unexpected crashes and ever more space debris.

And the debris problem is now becoming uppermost in the minds of many.

If the amount of junk continues to proliferate, we run the risk of eventually imprisoning ourselves on Earth. Unable to launch satellites and probes safely through the barrier of debris — or protect them once they’re up there — we could be forced to permanently retreat back to Earth’s surface. The economic and military shock to the United States’ standing in the world would be almost incalculable.

These are the scary stakes we now face by continuing to oppose the PAROS negotiations for a new treaty on space. With a new administration in Washington, we have a chance to start changing our policy course. But we need to get busy bargaining in earnest. A couple more crackups like the one Feb. 10, and this will be a “prison planet” and “ain’t nobody gonna be goin’ nowhere.”

/This article was originally published in the Omaha World-Herald and is reprinted with permission./