Space Debris Affirmative
LEO Orbit = High Amount of Space Debris
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- Advantage 1: Satellites (1/7)
LEO Orbit = High Amount of Space DebrisGreatest risk of space debris within the LEO region - region where most human-space interaction takes place Pearson et.al-10 (Jerome Pearson, Ohio Eta ’61, is president of STAR, Inc business that has developed concepts for DOD and NASA; invented the Earth and lunar space elevators, developed multi-winglets for lowered aircraft drag, published engineering solutions to space debris, and conceived spacecraft EDDE., he was an engineer at NASA Langley and Ames research centers and a branch chief for the Air Force Research Laboratory, ACTIVE DEBRIS REMOVAL: EDDE, THE ELECTRODYNAMIC DEBRIS ELIMINATOR, 2010, http://www.star-tech-inc.com/papers/EDDE_IAC_Final_Paper.pdf, rn) Space debris can be divided into SSdifferent orbital regimes and levels of danger to spacecraft and astronauts. Most catalogued debris is in LEO, defined as orbits below 2000 km altitude. In geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), there are many high-value broadcast satellites and environmental satellites, but relatively few debris objects. The debris objects in GEO, such as the Galaxy 15 satellite that is drifting, move at low velocities relative to operational satellites, and do not yet pose the danger of high-velocity collisions that can create tens of thousands of new pieces of debris. In medium Earth orbit (MEO), defined as orbits between 2000 km and GEO, there are fewer satellites and debris objects, and the dangers of collisions are much lower. The LEO regime represents the more immediate problem. There are more debris objects, the results of collisions can be more catastrophic, and the highest value asset, the International Space Station, is in LEO. For these reasons, active debris removal in LEO should be addressed first. Table I describes the lethal debris objects in LEO. They can be usefully divided into 3 categories based on their size and the resulting nature of their threat: The bullets are the primary threat to operational satellites, and most new bullets come from car collisions. This means that we must remove the cars to prevent LEO pollution with new bullets. A December 2009 conference sponsored by NASA and DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), featured many proposed solutions, including large orbiting shields to catch small debris, ground-based lasers to ablate the front side of debris to deboost it, and active spacecraft to capture large debris items and drag them down to atmospheric entry3. Space debris has consumed our lower earth orbit and has the potential to destroy our satellites. Ansdell in 10 (Master in international Science and Technology Policy at the University’s Elliott school of International Affairs with a focus on space policy, Princeton Journal of Public and International Affairs, Space Debris Removal, http://www.princeton.edu/jpia/past-issues-1/2010/Space-Debris-Removal.pdf, AX) There are currently hundreds of millions of space debris fragments orbiting the Earth at speeds of up to several kilometers per second. Although the majority of these fragments result from the space activities of only three countries—China, Russia, and the United States—the indiscriminate nature of orbital mechanics means that they pose a continuous threat to all assets in Earth’s orbit. There are now roughly 300,000 pieces of space debris large enough to completely destroy operating satellites upon impact Advantage 1: Satellites (1/7)The military relies on satellites for accurate surveillance and intelligence gathering Short No Date (Nicholas M. Sr, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Technical and Historical Perspective of Remote Sensing, Military Intelligence Satellites, No Date, http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Intro/Part2_26e.html, NG) Looking down and out (as from a mountain) to survey the battlefield for information useful to military leaders goes back to ancient times. In Napoleonic times, the French used observation balloons to scan their foes before and during battles. This technique was often a factor in the U.S. Civil War. By the First World War, airplanes and dirigibles were employed over enemy lines and their staging areas and cities as platforms from which aerial photography provided reconnaissance and intelligence pertinent to the content of battle. This approach was much expanded during the Second World War, as for example the follow-ups to a bombing raid to assess damage to the target. With the advent of rockets and then satellites, observations of both military and political activities on the ground became possible, ushering in the so-called Age of Spy Satellites. Since the beginning of entry into space, hundreds of these satellites have been launched, first by the U.S. and the Soviet Union and then other nations. Besides surveillance of a wide variety of targets of interest to military intelligence units (in the United States, these include the Department of Defense, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and Homeland Defense), satellites can now assist in areas other than simply observing features on the ground - this includes communications, meteorology, oceanography, location (Global Position Systems [GPS]), and Early Warning Systems (none of these latter applications will be discussed on this page). In addition to satellites, manned aircraft continue to be platforms and in recent years UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) such as drones have assumed some of the intelligence-gathering tasks. Position of satellites and increasing amount of debris in space threaten collisions. Butt and Black 10 (Samuel Black is a research associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Previously, he was a research assistant at the Center for Defense Information. He holds undergraduate degrees in government and politics and a graduate degree in public policy from the University of Maryland. Yousaf Butt is a staff scientist in the High-Energy Astrophysics Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and is currently on leave at the National Academy of Sciences. Previously, he worked on NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory Project and served as a research fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program. He holds a PhD in experimental nuclear astrophysic, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, The Growing threat of Space Debris, April 2010; http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=5c1f1056-b59b-445d-a5ae-027b5c3b4aa4%40sessionmgr14&vid=18&hid=14, rn) The threat to satellites in low Earth orbit is heightened because most are not in equatorial orbits, but rather in polar or near-polar orbits.21 Because all satellites in such orbits cross above Earth’s poles, the risk of collision near these two spots is dramatically higher than the risk of collision at any other point during an orbit, creating a polar bottleneck. The spatial density of satellites over the poles is approximately 10 times greater than that over the equator. As a result, the debris problem is exacerbated by two crowding problems: the concentration of debris at certain altitudes and the frequent, high-speed approaches occurring over the poles. 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