The U.S. has announced its plans to revise rules around space junk as thousands of pieces of potentially dangerous debris circle the Earth. Dr. Darren McKnight, the senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, joined Cheddar News to discuss. "Really, we've had decades-long where it's been typical to say if you operate a satellite even for just six months, you need to remove it 25 years after the mission lifetime," he said. "So well that's really bad. If you had a car break down the highway, you wouldn't leave it there for six months. You clean it up right away."

Closing Bell

U.S. Update Rules Around Space Junk

Welcome back to cheddar News is closing bell everyone. Well, as our planet's orbit is getting more crowded with satellites, the U. S. Government is signaling it is time to take the threats posed by space junk seriously. On the one hand, the White House issuing a plan last month detailing the steps that the biden administration hopes to take in order to track and mitigate mitigate debris in space. And then on the other hand, the FCC announcing it would start revising decades old rules on getting rid of space junk, unanimously voting in favor of updating the current rules that are quote largely built for another era, according to its chairwoman. Well, joining me now to discuss is Darren Mcknight, senior technical fellow at Leo labs. Darren thanks so much for coming on the show. I know the FCC is the sole agency to license virtually every commercial space mission that touches the US. What were its rules on cleaning up space debris before And what are some of the changes that it's now trying to implement? Right time to do this? Um, really we've had decades long where it's been typical to say if you operate a satellite even for just six months, you need to remove it 25 years after the mission lifetime. So well that's really bad. If you had a car break down the highway, you wouldn't leave it there for six months. You clean it up right away. And so I think the goal is going to be number one. What is the behavior, how long can something pose a collision with the other people needs to be shortened drastically? I think that's what they're going to do number one. Number two, we also need to make sure that the obvious that we launched are able to maneuver away from collision events, believe or not. Up until this point, we're still allowing satellites to be launched without collision avoidance, maneuver. Um, and so those two things alone, I think we'll do a lot to, to start to make space safer. Just how much space debris is out there Darren. Yeah. So, so if you wanna take a look in low earth orbit where a lot of the commercial work is done, we're talking about 20,000 objects that are in catalogs about 12,000. Those are fragments from hundreds of breakup events, believe or not. It's been hundreds of times when satellites have either exploded or collided and make debris that then ripple and cause other concerns. Really, there's only about 5 to 6000 operational satellites in low earth orbit so that you're outnumbered by the dead things versus the life. How much of a danger does the space debris pose to us on earth? Yeah. So as far as on Earth, many you may have heard about the long March five, the chinese rocket body that, that re entered last week. That was a massive object over 20 metric ton object that poses a risk to people on the ground. It's basically a statistical risk since most of the earth is covered in water. Um, you get, you want to have here a splash and not a thud that means it went into the water and not into a populated area. But this continual, there's about one large object where mass survives to the ground that could pose a risk to people every week. So this is not a one time thing. Last week was a major, a very large object, but typically objects on the order of 1000 to 5000 kg were lethal debris actually made it to the ground happens on a weekly basis. So as this happens more, um, it's kind of like the lottery. Um, you know, your odds go up of winning. Unfortunately this is a lottery you don't want to. Yeah. So I think it's interesting Darren that a lot of these satellites in orbit are actually owned and placed there by private companies. Why are they not responsible these private companies for cleaning up their own debris? Yeah, that's a that's a great question. And actually, I'll tell you that's that's that's kind of that's not the right question because in reality, the major risk to these new companies is from debris that was left by government entities over the last 40 years. So that the, the operational satellites that, that, that, that we've seen here on, on the screen are really focused on the actual small, able to avoid collisions and they actually are not the problem. They're going to be the victim of, of decades of leaving massive rocket bodies and payloads before there's any regulatory agencies that were trying to control it. So it's kind of the idea that we should stop littering in the park. But for five years it was a dumping zone for things we don't, we don't pick up that debris. Um, that was left there before really stopping littering is not going to make it safe, that's still posing a hazard. So we kind of have to errors that are, that are crossing in a way that that's gonna make it look like these new entrants are the problem actually, I believe going to be the victim for astronauts going up into space, especially as we talk more and more about commercial spaceflight. Right. The average joe going up into space as we saw with the inspiration for by SpaceX for instance, what kind of risk is space debris posed to them? How should they be thinking about this that on their own mission they might get derailed because of some sort of space debris out there. Yeah, So, so again, interestingly enough, the number one risk to astronauts on the space station is from orbital debris. So it's not from radiation effects, it's not from space weather, it's from Orville debris. So that is a long standing threat. And as as we like to say, it's sort of a threat that we've learned to live with. But as the population grows from from some of these very well regulated and very responsible constellations added with interactions between some of these old dead objects, that risk is gonna continue to grow. The good news is the space stations that are very low altitude where atmospheric drag helps to cleanse the debris very quickly. The problem is that some of the higher altitudes where you don't get that natural cleansing effect, um you have an accumulation that's starting to become very problematic about the ability for people to operate safely. So interesting, Darren and I think especially for our viewers here, who might think about a commercial spaceflight themselves as well as those well trained, well known astronauts, Darren Mcknight, senior technical fellow at Leo Labs. Darren, thank you so much.