Space Junk And ISS

NASA had to closely monitor two pieces of space junk that potentially threatened ISS this past week. Fortunately, neither came close enough to force NASA to maneuver the space station.

Space junk is increasingly seen as a threat to future space operations. These two are only the latest possible threats to ISS. So far, they have all missed-- ISS, after all, is a tiny target in the vastness of orbital space-- but at some point a piece of debris could hit an active, important satellite, or a manned mission to the Moon, or force ISS to be maneuvered away.

One interesting proposal to deal with the problem is to allow private industry to retrieve debris and bring it back to Earth. There is a national security problem with that approach, however. Anybody who could track down and capture useless pieces of junk in space would also have the capability to capture or destroy active vehicles. The counter to that would be to build defensive systems into satellites that might be targeted, but that would increase the cost of satellites, as well as increase the complexity of the satellites, which would result in higher failure rates.

Dealing with the problem of space junk may be no more sexy than dealing with Earthly junk, but dealing with both is necessary.