A small unidentified object, traveling thousands of kilometers per hour, has punched a satellite in Earth’s orbit.
Satellite company NanoAvionics has released images online showing damage to its MP42 satellite, which was launched in 2022 and is designed to host several instruments for different customers. The source of the hole from the pea-sized object is uncertain, but the event underscores the growing dangers of spacecraft orbiting our planet.
“Whether this impact was from a micrometeoroid or a piece of space debris, the collision highlights the need for responsible space operations in orbit and makes us think about the resilience of satellites against these types of events,” the company wrote online.
A NASA scientist viewed the first images of Voyager. What he saw made him cold.
Although environmental impacts from small meteoroids – which are pieces of the sky – are inevitable in our solar system (an area full of asteroids), both space agencies and companies alike do not want man-made space debris to proliferate. That would jeopardize everyone’s interests, and eventually could produce a domino effect of ever-increasing space collisions called the Kessler effect. (Mashable previously spoke with Don Kessler, former senior scientist for orbital debris research at NASA, about the debris hazard.)
The impact of the MP42 satellite thankfully did not contribute to the debris problem, but as shown below, it did leave a hole in the solar panel.
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Bottom left, a zoomed-in view shows a six-millimeter (quarter-inch) hole left by a recent collision.
Credit: Kongsberg NanoAvionics
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NanoAvionics noted that it has joined the Zero Debris Charter of the European Space Agency, which aims to significantly reduce the creation of new space debris by 2030. Just a little thing packs a big punch. “The collision of a 1cm particle traveling at 10 km/s (of which there are about a million in orbit) releases the same amount of energy as a small car crashing at 40 km/h,” said the agency.
“By joining this initiative, we are helping to ensure that NanoAvionics’ satellites and those from our customers operate responsibly and contribute to a safe future in space,” NanoAvionics wrote.
Responsible operation means that defunct spacecraft dump themselves in Earth’s atmosphere, where they will burn up. It also means designing craft that don’t intentionally release space debris (like lens caps or rocket parts), carefully monitoring potential collisions (the International Space Station, for example, must sometimes move to avoid a dangerous threat), and of course discouraging reckless destruction of spacecraft .
Today, uncontrolled orbital debris now enters an area around Earth called low Earth orbit, or LEO.
“LEO is an orbital space junk yard,” explains NASA. “There are millions of pieces of space debris flying in LEO. Most of the orbital debris consists of man-made objects, such as pieces of spaceships, small paints from spacecraft, parts of rockets, defunct satellites, or explosions of objects in orbit flying at high speeds in space. “