We regularly hear about the growing amount of space junk circling the Earth and the potential disaster a collision could cause. We haven’t had a disaster yet, but the International Space Station was damaged recently by a piece of debris too small to be monitored.
As the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) reports, the Canadarm2 robotic arm was hit by a piece of debris, which could have been anything from rock or dust particles to flecks of paint. The damage caused is significant, with a roughly 5mm puncture hole torn in the arm’s thermal blanket. Detailed images captured by CSA and NASA also confirmed some damage to the boom underneath the blanket.
Thankfully, the performance and operation of the arm hasn’t been affected, but this is a clear reminder of what can happen even when a tiny object is involved in a collision. The CSA says, “The threat of collisions is taken very seriously. NASA has a long-standing set of guidelines to ensure the safety of Station crew. The safety of astronauts on board the orbiting laboratory remains the top priority of all Station partners.”
Currently, there are over 23,000 objects circling the Earth and being monitored 24/7, but they are all the “size of a softball or larger.” Anything smaller than that is simply too small to be kept track of, which allows for unexpected collisions such as this one to occur. There was a near collision in October last year between Russian and Chinese space junk, and it seems likely we’ll hear of more incidents in the coming years. One ray of hope comes via the European Space Agency, which intends to use a giant claw to grab space junk in 2025 in a first attempt to start reducing the amount of debris above us.
