The next time your Wi-Fi goes down, your internet provider might try to blame it on tiny flecks of paint, experts have told Metro.
A big worry among scientists right now is ‘space junk’, a rather unthreatening-sounding word for dead satellites and machinery scraps.
But these tens of millions of cosmic rubbish pieces orbit the Earth at speeds seven times faster than a bullet.
At such speeds, even a fleck of paint could obliterate a satellite, knocking out internet services and navigation systems.
Dr Penelope Wozniakiewicz has told Metro that she has secured funding for a five-year project to show how dangerous space junk really is.
‘Space debris is one of the fastest-growing threats to the future of space exploration,’ the senior space science lecturer says.
Dr Wozniakiewicz’s team at the University of Kent are going to simulate cosmic collisions using a ‘two-stage gas gun’.
You can think of it as a giant NERF gun. Rather than bullets, it uses gas pressure to shoot pellets at 18,000 miles per hour.
By firing aluminium plates, rods and spheres at very high-speeds into each other, scientists will be able to safely recreate satellite smashes.
Data from the five-year PROSPER project will help space officials develop ‘dust detectors’ to measure how many internet-ending but hard-to-track particles there are.
‘With this project, we can generate the high-precision data that agencies and companies worldwide need to build a safer, cleaner and more sustainable space environment,’ Dr Wozniakiewicz says.
The project will be funded by the European Research Council, a European Union body that offers grants.
Tech giants – and their rubbish – in space
Space has become the lucrative new frontier for tech giants, with 15,100 tonnes worth of objects now in the heavens.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has blasted 7,600 satellites into low-orbit, forming a ‘mega-constellation’ of metal.
These satellites, called Starlink, beam internet service down to the ground from low Earth orbit.
Most can swerve to avoid crashes, but a solar storm could be all it takes to knock out their navigation systems and cause a ‘cascade’ of crashes in less than three days, according to a new study.
In 2018 – long before ‘mega-constellations’ of satellites became a thing – this level of chaos would have taken 121 days.
With all this metal above our heads, what astrophysicist Dr Alfredo Carpineti says is what happens if even one satellite fails.
‘Well, space could get very dangerous,’ the IFLScience writer tells Metro.
‘One collision produces a cloud of debris and that debris can go on and hit other satellites and so on.’
This is called the Kessler Syndrome, named for the former NASA scientist Donald Kessler, who feared that space junk could make low-orbit so cluttered that rockets would be unable to launch.
‘It could make entire regions of space dangerous to stay in and pass through,’ Dr Carpineti adds.
Earth’s atmosphere naturally pulls dead satellites down and incinerates them in the thicker lower atmosphere.
It’s partly why people have woken up to rocket chunks in their gardens, battery scraps punching through their roofs and NASA telescopes flattening their farms.
Increasing levels of carbon dioxide caused by climate change are weakening this effect, however, so fewer items are being dragged down.
In a worst-case scenario, there will be five times more space junk in the cosmos by 2100.
Dr Carpineti adds: ‘If we lose control of a larger object coming back to earth because of space junk, then the situation might get dangerous.’
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