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Future missions will produce more space debris, but no one is in charge of cleaning it up

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People think of space as vast and empty, but the near-Earth environment is getting crowded. As many as 100 lunar missions are planned over the next decade by governments and private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.


The Near-Earth orbit is even more congested than the space between Earth and the moon. It's from 100 to 500 miles straight up, compared with 240,000 miles to the moon. Currently, there are nearly 7,700 satellites within a few hundred miles of the Earth. That number could grow to several hundred thousand by 2027. Many of these satellites will be used to deliver internet to developing countries or to monitor agriculture and climate on Earth. Companies like SpaceX have dramatically lowered launch costs, driving this wave of activity.


Tiny pieces of junk might not seem like a big issue, but that debris is moving at 15,000 mph (24,140 km/h), ten times faster than a bullet. At that speed, even a fleck of paint can puncture a spacesuit or destroy a sensitive piece of electronics. Humans have left a lot of junk on the moon, including spacecraft remains like rocket boosters from over 50 crashed landings, nearly 100 bags of human waste and miscellaneous objects like a feather, golf balls and boots. It adds up to around 200 tons of our trash. Since no one owns the moon, no one is responsible for keeping it clean and tidy.


Because of the lack of regulation, space junk is an example of a "tragedy of the commons," where many interests have access to a common resource, and it may become depleted and unusable to everyone, because no interest can stop another from overexploiting the resource. Scientists argue that to avoid a tragedy of the commons, the orbital space environment should be seen as a global commons worthy of protection by the United Nations.


A new treaty may emerge from the work of the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs, which in May 2023 generated a policy document to address the sustainable development of activities in space. The lack of regulation and the current gold rush approach to space exploration mean that space junk and waste will continue to accumulate, as will the related problems and dangers.




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