The Earth Will Look Like Planet Saturn, With Rings Of Space Junk Around The Orbit

Earth begins to be surrounded by orbiting space junk. (photo: NASA0 illustration

JAKARTA – Space debris is an increasing problem. This makes, the researchers say that Earth may soon get a ring-like Planet Saturn made of garbage left behind by the space program.

Saturn's rings are natural and made of ice and rock material, so the rings around Earth are made almost entirely of extraterrestrial debris. This could happen with more and more countries venturing into space every decade. The issue continues to bubble out of control and recent events, such as Russia's test of an anti-satellite weapon, have only exacerbated the problem.

NASA and the US government blame Russia for contributing significantly to the space debris problem by carrying out the aforementioned tests which are said to have generated thousands of pieces of orbital debris of varying sizes.

The debris now adds to the space debris problem and poses a major risk to the International Space Station (ISS) and satellites in geostationary orbit. The debris also poses a potential threat to the lives of US, Russian and Chinese astronauts and cosmonauts currently in space.

With space debris becoming increasingly dangerous to equipment and people, researchers are now working on plans to minimize space debris using magnets.

As part of the research published in the journal Nature, University of Utah professor Jake Abbott and his colleagues looked at using magnets to suck up debris instead of using robots.

Speaking to The Salt Lake Tribune, Abbott said that using robots to collect rotating debris was impractical because they could potentially break the robot's arm and create even more debris.

Instead, magnets would be a more practical solution for clearing space debris without risking further debris creation. Interestingly, Abbott says that magnets would be a good solution even for cleaning non-metallic items.

According to the European Space Agency (ESA), there are more than 170 million pieces of space debris measuring more than 1 mm. While the largest can tear the satellite to pieces in the event of a collision. Even the smallest piece of trash can destroy critical systems on a spacecraft.

Almost all of these parts move and orbit the Earth, but many of them even fall to Earth from time to time. One example is part of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle that landed on a farm in Washington State earlier this year.

Astrophysicists believe that there are at least 19.000 large pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit, which extends from about 120 miles to 1.200 miles (200 km to 2.000 km) above Earth. The combined weight of all the space debris is estimated at 7.500 metric tons, which is equivalent to about 1.100 elephants.

Speaking with The Guardian, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said that there could be "hundreds of thousands" of tiny bits of trash that are too small to appear on radar, but still make a clear impression and pose a clear threat at the moment to the ISS and future space missions.