In an ironic twist, man's exploration of space may end up preventing us from further exploring the heavens. In the wake of China's January 11th anti-satellite missile test, scientists are becoming more concerned with the ever increasing amount of "space junk" accumulating around the planet. Prior to the Chinese missile test we were surrounded by over 10,000 detectable bits of garbage ranging in size from small 4 inch pieces of random debris and hand tools lost by astronauts on space walks to larger objects like disused satellites and spent rocket stages from the past 50 years of space exploration. The destruction of the abandoned Chinese weather satellite has added another 800 to 1000 pieces of debris to the cloud, already described by scientists as being at critical mass. The fear is that with so much junk in Earth's orbit a single collision between pieces of debris will spark a chain reaction, exponentially increasing the number of objects littering near space, leading to a situation referred to as the Kessler Syndrome. Named after a former NASA official, the Kessler Syndrome describes a situation where their is so much space junk orbiting Earth that launches become impossible. While the syndrome's namesake feels that launches being made physically impossible may be an over exaggeration, Kessler fears that if nothing is done to curb the amount of crap accumulating on our galactic doorstep space exploration will be threatened by the rising costs associated with shielding spacecraft from the debris cloud orbiting the planet. While no one is sure when the catastrophic chain reaction will take place (could be tomorrow could be in 1,000 years), they are all certain it will happen unless something is done to prevent it from happening.

Orbiting Junk, Once a Nuisance, Is Now a Threat [via Orbitcast]
science, space, travel, Kessler Syndrome