Orbital debris could pose a major risk to giant space-based solar power structures unless society undertakes efforts to clean up debris. (credit: Artemis Innovation Management Solutions)

Are solar power satellites sitting ducks for orbital debris?

<< page 1: space debris and orbital mechanics

The Russian stakes for cooperation to remove orbital debris

Most of the large orbital debris is Russian, including over 70% of the total mass in LEO. US-Russia relations have fallen to another nadir. The relationship is filled with the growing suspicion and mutual hostility harkening back to the Cold War. So why would Russia cooperate with the United States (and others) to deal with orbital debris?

First, those Russian debris pieces, large and small, carry with them liability under the 1972 Liability Convention. Second, the debris represents enormous value in an emerging economic model for space debris cleanup, both as already emplaced highly refined metal and buses for enabling nanosats. Third, the US Department of State, in coordination with the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), could play crucial role in putting together an agreement between Russia and the United States to remove the 79% of the orbital debris with the greatest shrapnel-generating potential. Fourth, this heritage of Russian space debris may provide a strategic opportunity for Russia to enhance its international position in the commercial development of space.

Sweating the small stuff: what about the shrapnel?

To remove small debris, “laser nudging” from ground-based lasers appears to be the most viable option. In this concept, a powerful ground-based laser would ablate the front surface off a debris target to slow and thereby deorbit it. To remove the political-military element, the system would have to be ground-based, transparent, and under international civilian control. In this regard, several observers have proposed an international civilian consortium to manage, in transparent fashion, ground-based lasers targeting debris shrapnel smaller than 10 centimeters for ablation to induce deorbiting.³⁴ Under such a regimen, consensus would be needed to select targets and timing for deorbiting. A bounty system could also be used to facilitate commercial participation so that the consortium members need not pay for complex and expensive development project, or for failures, but only for results.³⁵ A system paying bounties for results could also be used to facilitate the removal of large debris.

Along with property rights in space, international laws and treaties touching on the delicate issue of lasers to remove orbital debris will eventually have to be modified. The prestigious Institute of Air and Space Law of McGill University has recently proposed a meeting to carry out just such considerations.³⁶

Shrapnel-tracking improvements are crucial

When it comes to using lasers to deorbit debris, beyond having to organize a large group space-involved countries and getting their consensus, there is another major problem standing in the way: small orbital debris is currently not being tracked, and even larger debris is not tracked in real-time.³⁷

Doug Beason, Senior Vice President for Special Programs at the Universities Space Research Association, decries the lack of tracking of the most immediately dangerous shrapnel, i.e. debris larger than five millimeters but smaller than ten centimeters. He suggests public-private efforts to “find, fix, track, and target” orbital debris objects, so they can be engaged and that engagement later be assessed.³⁸ Also, because the Joint Space Operations Center is part of US Strategic Command, much of its tracking technology is secret. According to Beason, an international station with optical, radar, and polarization debris-tracking technologies under civilian control is urgently needed, not to find and track sensitive satellites, but to find and track in real-time, orbital debris, including shrapnel

Instead of depending on military debris detection and tracking wrapped in secret capabilities and protocols, international investment in a transparent non-military commercial tracking system is needed. We have transitioned from a military-only GPS system to commercial dependence on GPS tracking that now includes Russian GLONASS and European Galileo systems, in addition to Chinese and Indian positioning systems. We can make the same type of transition with orbital debris tracking systems.

“Free parking” orbits as commercial disincentives to risk reduction

Beyond remediation, steps can be taken to mitigate orbital debris as well. Joe Carroll decries the 25-year “free parking,” which results from international guidelines for satellite companies to deorbit their satellites after 25 years of non-use.³⁹ Technology already exists that can begin deorbiting a satellite the moment it stops functioning. In this regard, the company Tethers Unlimited has developed a conductive “terminator tape,” which uncoils out of a defunct satellite, causing both aerodynamic and electrodynamic drag to deorbit the spacecraft. Two of the company’s terminator tapes are currently being tested as demonstrators on CubeSats.⁴⁰

On the other side of the ocean, the European Space Agency (ESA), in coordination with the University of Surrey, is about to test the de-orbiting capabilities of the pop-out five-by-five-meter gossamer solar sail technology it developed.⁴¹ Other countries and institutions are developing debris mitigation and remediation technologies based on grab-and-plunge spacecraft, solar sails, electro-static nets, and balloons.⁴²

The risk of generating hundreds of millions of dollars of damage from orbital debris collisions is currently not properly balanced against the costs of deorbiting or moving satellites. An economic model creating disincentives for extending the risk-time of zombie satellites is needed and is another topic for consideration of new space laws and treaty provisions. At present, we have not developed the mix of carrots and sticks needed for an effective economic model.

Pay now or pay (much more) later⁴³

There is an old adage that “a stitch in time, saves nine.” In the spirit of this saying, we should note that if no action is taken to address orbital debris until there are multi-level Kessler cascades, the tab will be much higher than now in terms of direct financial costs for satellite insurance, satellite replacement, and satellite service disruption in various industries and businesses. Therefore, nearly all persons living in industrialized societies will eventually have to pay the tab one way or another, if in no other way, through increased user fees.

If the voluntary “seed money” and bond schemes mentioned above (under “The Risk Avoidance-Insurance/ISRU Industrial Start-up Model”) are not instituted, it might fall to the international space-users community to empower the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (ITSO) to collect a universal and mandatory tax on satellite services to finance bounties to be paid to commercial entities for orbital debris remediation. For such a plan to work, all satellite-service providers would have to contribute (i.e. no “free riders”), so that no competitive advantage would exist from non-compliance.

Orbital debris: resource ladder to the stars

Not only is orbital debris the “low hanging fruit” with regard to a vast supply of already refined metal and emplaced structures on which to hang empowering nanosats, the technologies that will be developed to deal with debris, will also be useful for dealing with capturing and mining near-Earth asteroids (NEOs),⁴⁴ lunar mining, on-orbit assembly of spacecraft, robotic transport of materials, and other technologies. Growing out of a commitment to remove, recycle, or rehabilitate orbital debris could come new cislunar industries, including materials reprocessing, spacecraft manufacturing, multi-purpose platform construction, propellant depots and staging site construction, cislunar transportation development, new communication networks, and navigation infrastructure.

Summary

The issue raised by the consideration of solar power satellites as sitting ducks is merely illustrative of the risks and reward of both present and future economic activities. It also raises the issue of international legal reforms and new initiatives. Space debris could be a show stopper for the future—but only if we let it. It is well within our power to constructively address the risks and investments to facilitate an emergent, and eventually booming, cislunar space ecosphere.

The investment to manage and remediate space debris is first an “insurance” cost to maintain acceptable levels of risk in doing space-connected business. Remediating orbital debris is also the road to a vibrant cislunar economy. The emerging cislunar economy will include solar power satellites, GEO communications platforms, Earth-Moon Lagrange facilities, and a reusable transportation infrastructure in cislunar space and will be orders of magnitude greater than the current space economy. Solving the challenges of orbital debris opens the door to that greater economy.

Endnotes

1. Mankins, John C.; The Case for Space Solar Power, 2014, p. 21.
2. NASA Orbital Debris Program Office; “Orbital Debris Frequently Asked Questions.” (http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/faqs.html#7), 12 November 2013.
3. Jer-Chyi Liou speaking at the 2014 NewSpace Conference Orbital Debris Panel on July 26.
4. Jer-Chyi Liou; Ibid., stated that working satellites represent only about 7% of the large objects in orbit around the Earth. Other have put the fraction at 7.6%.
5. Jer-Chyi Liou; Op. Cit.
6. Jer-Chyi Liou; Op. Cit.
7. NASA; Op. Cit.
8. For first reference to what became known as the “Kessler Syndrome,” see Kessler, D. J. and B. J. Cour-Palais (1978), “Collision frequency of artificial satellites: The creation of a debris belt,” J. Geophys. Res., 83(A6), 2637–2646, doi:10.1029/JA083iA06p02637. For a reference to the Kessler Syndrome being approached, see Grossman, Lisa, “NASA considers Shooting Space Junk with Laser,” Wired, 15 March 2011; National Research Council, “Orbital Debris: A Technical Assessment,” The National Academies Press, 1995.
9. Kessler, Donald; “The Kessler Syndrome” (http://webpages.charter.net/dkessler/files/KesSym.html) webpages.charter.net, 8 March 2009.
10. See http://lasvegascitylife.com/sections/opinion/knappster/George-knapp-infinity----and-beyond.html, April 14, 2013.
11. SPS-ALPHA stands for “Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large Phased Array.”
12. Mankins, John C.; Op. Cit. pps. 461.
13. Mankins, Op.Cit.; pps. 8 and 424.
14. Mankins; Op. Cit. p. 9.
15. Joe Carroll, President of Tether Applications, Inc., speaking at the 2014 NewSpace Conference Orbital Debris Panel on July 26. Also, Jer-Chyi Liou, Op. Cit.
16. Multiple publications speak of this disaster, including NASA, Op. Cit.
17. Jer-Chyi Liou stated at the 2014 NewSpace Conference that shrapnel from 5 mm to 1 cm is the most dangerous because of its ubiquity and relative velocity. It is the collision of car-sized objects, from 1–9 metric tons, however, which has contributed and will continue to contribute to the vast growth of these objects.
18. $200 million subsequent cost versus $30 million immediate cost per catastrophic collision. But this conservative estimate does not take into consideration all downstream costs due to loss of communication and electronic services on the ground, which could run into the billions, especially with multiple collisions. See Pearson, Jerome;Levin, Eugene; Carroll, Joseph; “The Long-Term Cost of Debris Removal from LEO,” 64th International Astronautical Congress, Beijing, China, 2013.
19. Dykewicz, Paul; “DARPA Advances Plans to Salvage Antennas of Retired, In-Orbit Satellites,” http://www.onorbitwatch.com/program/darpa-advances-plans-salvage-antennas-retired-orbitsatellites, 24 November 2013. The cellularization process was also described by David Barnhart, Program Manager for DARPA Phoenix, during the Orbital Debris Panel on July 26 at the 2014 NewSpace Conference.
20. “Intelsat Picks MacDonald, Dettwiler, and Associates Ltd. For Satellite Servicing,” http://www.mdacorporation.com/corporate /news/pr/pr2011031501.cfm, 15 March 2011; Spark, Joel; “MDA, Intelsat Cancel On-Orbit Servicing Deal,” Space Safety Magazine, 20 January 2012; Foust, Jeff; “The Space Industry Grapples with Satellite Servicing,” The Space Review, 25 June 2012.
21. Adrienne Alessandro for Goddard Space Flight Center, “NASA’s Robotic Refueling Mission Practices New Satellite-Servicing Tasks,” Space Daily, 13 May 2013.
22. Pearson, Jerome; Levin, Eugene; Carroll, Joseph; “Affordable Debris Removal and Collection in LEO,” 63rd International Astronautical Congress, Naples, Italy, 2012. http://www.star-tech-inc.com/papers/Affordable_Debris_Removal_IAC_2012.pdf.
23. Hungarian J. Szentesi has designed a non-propellant space device, using what he calls an Electro-Magnetic Propulsion System (EMPS), which also thrusts against a planet’s magnetic field and theoretically could be used to move orbital debris. See J. Szentesi; “Electro-Magnetic Propulsion System (EMPS) for Spacecrafts and Satellites, 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, 2012.
24. Pearson, et al; both publications Op. Cit. Joe Carroll noted more specifically at the 2014 NewSpace Conference that three-eighths of the mass of orbital debris is at 81–83° inclination and three-sixteenths is in sun-synchronous orbit.
25. Joe Carroll; Op. Cit.
26. Joe Carroll; Op. Cit.
27. Although EDDE vehicles use solar energy to create an electrical flux, other spacecraft potentially involved in debris mediation may very well benefit from energy beamed from the ISS.
28. “Upgraded Space X Falcon 9.1.1 will launch 25% more than old Falcon 9 and bring the price down to $4209 per kilogram to LEO,” http://nextbigfuture.com2013/03/upgraded-spacex-falcon-911-will-launch.html.
29. Pearson, et al.; “Affordable Debris Removal….”; Op. Cit.
30. See http://www.cinelli-iron-metal.com/market.php.
31. Pearson, et al.; “Affordable Debris….”; Op. Cit., http://www.star-tech-inc.com/papers/Affordable_Debris_Removal_IAC_2012.pdf.
32. http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2046/delta-v-chart-mathematics; http://www.strout.net/info/science/delta-v/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget.
33. Ibid.
34. For general information about how ground-based laser could be used to deorbit space debris see work by Dr. Claude Phipps, http://photonicassociates.com/.
35. Robertson, Donald F.; “A Commercial Approach to Debris Control,” Ad Astra, pps. 20–23.
36. Co-author Dunlop’s personal communication with Andrea DiPaolo of McGill University Institute of Air and Space Law.
37. Doug Beason, speaking at the 2014 NewSpace Conference Orbital Debris Panel on July 26, noted that Space Command does not track even larger debris in real-time and can only predict location of large debris seven days in advance and with error-bars of 1.5–10 km.
38. Doug Beason; Ibid.
39. Joe Carroll at 2014 NewSpace Conference; Op. Cit. For general background on problems caused by free parking relevant to the LEO commons, see book by Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking, Updated Edition, 2011. Also see article by Garret Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, 13 December 1968, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full
40. Robert Hoyt, CEO and Chief Scientist of Tethers Unlimited, described on July 26 this de-orbiting system during the Orbital Debris Panel at the 2014 NewSpace Conference.
41. Schenk, Mark; “Cleaning Up Space Debris with Sailing Satellites,” University of Surrey, 31 January 2014.
42. See Quigley, J. T.; “Japan will Cast a ‘Magnetic Net’ for Space Junk, 16 January 2014; Rutkin, Aviva Hope; “Japan’s Huge Magnetic Net Will Trawl for Space Junk,” New Scientist, 22 January 2014. Also see Pousaz,Lionel; “The Time Has Come to Destroy Debris,” http://www.s-3.ch/en/mission-goals; Barraud, Emmanuel; “Cleaning up Earth’s Orbit: A Swiss Satellite to Tackle Space Debris,” Mediacom, http://www.s-3.ch/en/mission-goals and http://actu.epfl.ch/news/cleaning-up-earth-s-orbit-a-swisss-satellite-to-tac/. S3 is itself partnering with 12 other companies and one major investor/sponsor (Breitling).
43. McNight, Darren; “Pay Me Now or Pay Me More Later: Start the Development of Active Orbital Debris Removal Now,” http://www.amostech.com/TechnicalPapers/2010/Posters/McKnight.pdf.
44. Robert Hoyt; Op. Cit. at the 2014 NewSpace Conference, also described company mechanisms that could be used for de-spinning orbital debris an

Al Anzaldua is a retired US State Department diplomat and a space advocate for nearly 30 years. His educational background is in science and international studies, with a Masters degree in Latin American Studies. In the Foreign Service he carried out diplomatic and science-related work, primarily in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Al is president of the Tucson L5 Space Society, a local chapter of the National Space Society (NSS), and is an active participant in other space-related organizations. He gives frequent presentations and exhibitions on space-related subjects to a variety of audiences and is devoted to seeing humans become a multi-world species. Al serves on the NSS International Committee is the NSS Board of Directors Representative for Region 3, covering the US Southwest and Latin America.

Dave Dunlop is a long time member of the National Space Society (NSS), has worked in educational outreach for Michigan Technological University, and first developed the Rockets for Schools Program in Wisconsin with the Wisconsin Space Business Roundtable and subsequently in Michigan. He has an M. A Degree in Science Education from the University of Illinois and has held professional positions in Mental Health Administration and Education during his career. He has served on the Board of Directors of the NSS and is currently Chair of the NSS International Committee. He also frequently participates in program planning for the Lunar Track at the annual International Space Development Conference.

Brad Blair is a geologist, mining engineer and mineral economist consulting from Idaho Springs, Colorado on advanced mining and aerospace technology, and the future economic use of space resources. He began researching lunar in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) in 1989 under NASA Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) funding as a Mining graduate student at the Colorado School of Mines. During the summer of 1999, Brad was a visiting professional at the NASA/JSC Exploration Office, where he learned and practiced the art of cost estimation in support of a design reference mission for human Mars exploration. From 2001-2005, he and a small team of graduate students at Colorado School of Mines conducted research for NASA on topics related to ISRU and space resource economics. Since that time Brad has worked under US and Canadian government research contracts, and consulted for aerospace and mining industry clients on ISRU design and economic analysis as well as advanced ISRU technologies. He directly participated in two NASA centennial challenges and is currently advising and participating in NewSpace startup companies. Brad was recently elected to the National Space Society (NSS) Board of Directors as a representative for Region 4, is an Advocate of the Space Frontier Foundation, is the current Chairman of the Board for the International Space Development Authority Corporation (ISDAC), and is a Heinlein Scholar for the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust (HPT).

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