By Dave Ahearn
The huge debris field from the collision of an Iridium Satellite LLC spacecraft and a defunct Russian satellite may create a large danger-filled zone where no spacecraft can enter safely, a space threat that could last for years, according to Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Cartwright spoke yesterday before a space symposium of the Marshall Institute, a Washington think tank, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at the Chamber headquarters in Washington.
It will be a month or two before the myriad pieces of debris from the collision (Cartwright termed it a “conjunction”) settle down and experts can determine how those pieces of shrapnel, each moving about 17,500 miles an hour, will affect spacecraft.
If the hazardous debris pieces deny spacecraft safe passage through a large area of space, that will be a significant problem, Cartwright said.
He declined to discuss who might be liable or responsible for the collision. “I’m not going to get into the legal side of this,” he said.
But for the future, he ventured some thoughts. Cartwright said that in the half-century since the Russian Sputnik satellite launched the space age, space has become “crowded,” and spotting potential problems before they occur would require space situational awareness.
A multi-national approach, with some global cooperation, would be well, he indicated.
Iridium said in a statement that it “lost” a satellite, but that other satellites in the 66-spacecraft-plus-spares constellation are filling in for work that the demolished bird performed.
The latest debris problem came after China in 2007 created a gigantic debris cloud by launching a ground-based interceptor to demolish one of its own orbiting weather satellites.
That widely condemned act, along with China using a ground-based laser to disable a U.S. military satellite, showed China has the ability to place critical American military satellites at risk.