Space Debris from Anti-satellite Weapons
October 2007
GSP co-director and senior scientist David Wright has written a study of space debris that appears in the October issue of the journal Physics Today. The article provides one of the first public discussions of the amount of space debris that would result from destroying satellites using anti-satellite weapons.
The article provides background information on the debris issue, including the amount and sources of the current debris, how it is distributed in space, and the threat it poses to satellites in orbit.
It shows that the destruction of satellites by anti-satellite weapons would produce much larger amounts of debris than is commonly understood. In particular, the destruction of one large satellite—such as a U.S. reconnaissance satellite—would double the total amount of debris in low Earth orbit (below 2,000 km altitude) large enough to damage or destroy satellites. The destruction of one such satellite would negate the debris reduction that would be achieved in several decades of international debris mitigation measures that have been adopted to limit debris production from routine space activity.
The article also examines the consequences of the destruction of a smaller satellite by China in its January 2007 test of an anti-satellite system, and looks at the long-term evolution of the space debris environment.
The full citation of the article is "Space Debris," by David Wright, Physics Today, Vol. 60, No. 10, October 2007, pp. 35-30 (Copyright 2007, American Institute of Physics).
