Odds are, if there’s going to be a Third World War, it won’t be caused by political extremists, religious zealots or power-mad dictators trying to conquer the world – it’ll be because a stray fragment of space junk accidentally collided with a military satellite, according to a new report.
As reported by CNET and The Guardian, Russian scientists have published a new paper in the journal Acta Astronautica, in which they indicate that debris floating in orbit around Earth poses a “special political danger” and could result in all-out armed conflict between nations.
Reports indicate that more than 23,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 centimeters are being tracked surrounding the planet, but estimates indicate there could be a half-billion fragments that are at least one centimeter and trillions of particles even smaller than that. All of them may pose a potential danger, according to Vitaly Adushkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Space agencies trying to track debris, prevent collisions
As Adushkin and his colleagues explained, even miniscule pieces of space junk contain enough energy to cause damage to, or completely destroy a military satellite. Such an occurrence may be mistaken for a deliberate attack by an opposing country, they added, and could “provoke political or even armed conflict between space-faring nations”.
The country that owns the damaged or destroyed satellite would be unable to “quickly determine the real cause of the accident,” the researchers wrote. Over the past few decades, several defense satellites have suddenly failed for unexplained reasons. In these cases, they added, there are only two possible causes: a collision with space debris, or an attack by an opposing force.
Adushkin and his colleagues cite two examples of unexplained incidents that involved defense probes. Three years ago, a Russian satellite called Blits was disabled by debris believed to originate from an Chinese weather satellite that Beijing had destroyed with a missile. Also, in 2014, the International Space Station needed to move to avoid space junk on five separate occasions.
Space programs are clearly concerned about the threat of space junk, if not specifically about its potential to kick off a global war. NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office constantly attempts to measure and monitor orbiting debris, while Huffington Post UK added that the ESA’s e.DeOrbit project will track large fragments and attempts to prevent future debris-causing collisions.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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