Into the Space Debris Swamp

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What we've been talking here has been several collision avoidance maneuvers. There's one every two minutes currently. All of this shows though, is that it's not coming down, it's going up and it's staying up. Hello, welcome to the Supermassive Podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society. With me, science journalist Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst. We think space needs a little bit of a spring clean, so this episode we'll be chatting about Space Debris. What is it? How big of a problem is it? And what is being done to remove it? Yeah, so we'll be hearing from Megan Perks from the University of Southampton, who studies how safe all these new satellite constellations are, and photographer Max Alexander, who's created an exhibition about space debris. It's called Our Fragile Space, and it's on for free outside of the Royal Astronomical Society until the 10th of May, 2026, for anyone that listens to our back catalogue, that's this year. But don't worry if you can't make it, because Max gave me a tour, which you'll hear later in the show. And it features Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr Robert Massey. So Robert, let's dive in. What actually classifies as space debris? Yeah, thanks for that plug. It's not my greatest hit there, I think. I have a great photo. You said that at the time, it's a great photo. Let the listeners judge you. Anyway, it's space debris, yes, space debris. So this is distinct from natural dust or rocks, the stuff that comes in, so meteorites, comet debris, etc. etc. What we're talking about is the artificial material left in space by human beings. So that includes either it's not an exhaustive, but it's rocket bodies, defunct satellites, and technically I was thinking about this, I guess those dead space probes that are leaving the solar system, they're not really going to do much harm. Voyager 1 isn't going to encounter anything for a rather long time. Voyager 1 isn't dead? Don't say that, Robert. No, no, no, no, that's true. Well, you say such a thing. Yes, I'm sorry. Cover your ears, Voyager, please. Gloves, tools, flecks of paint, and that sort of stuff. And basically my thought of it is it's like fly tipping and littering in space. We should stop it. It's ridiculous. And there's so much of it, there's billions and billions of pieces. Most of them are too small to track, which is a huge problem. So we should definitely worry about it. And the debris comes from when we launch things into space, when satellites break down and they're defunct, when astronauts drop things, you know, we're all humans. So occasionally that's going to happen when satellites collide, which has happened quite dramatically once. And in the worst case, when some countries decide to do anti-satellite weapons test, you're not allowed to do it to other peoples, but you can do it to your own. So the US, China, India, Russia have all done this in the last 20 years. And of course, you fire a missile at a satellite and it showers, it creates a huge shower of additional debris. So that's a big problem. Okay, so that's an introduction to space debris, but just how big of a problem is it? Here's Megan Perks from the University of Southampton with the details. If we're looking at Earth orbits, we have about three major regions, which are known as Leo, Mio, and Geo, where Leo stands for low Earth orbit. And it's the region that's closest to Earth. So it's between about 200 kilometers up to about 2000 kilometers above the Earth's surface. And we have Geo, which refers to geostationary orbit, it's a thin altitude band just over about, I think it's 35,000 kilometers. And then we have Mio, which is the middle region in between the two. So we have debris populations that span across all three of them. But if you're interested in absolute numbers, looking at the European Space Agency's current estimates, there's probably about 50,000 debris objects that are larger than 10 centimeters in length. And then we have about one million objects that are larger than one centimeter. And then if we go smaller again, based on statistical models, there's an estimated 140 million debris objects that are between the range of one millimeter to one centimeter in size. So there's a lot of stuff up there, Izzy. Oh my gosh, that is a lot of space junk. Okay. And so of those different regions, you know, we've got low Earth orbit, near Earth orbit, geostationary. Which one is kind of the most populated? Are they all quite messy? Which one's the worst? Like, where do we see it as a big problem? Sure. So if we're looking at it from a problem perspective, we tend to focus a lot on low Earth orbit at the moment, because that's where we're going to see a lot of increase in the number of satellites and things in the coming years. All of the new proposed mega constellations or large satellite constellations are based in low Earth orbit. So when we're talking about debris, that's often where people tend to focus. But there's certainly debris in the geostationary environment as well. But I mainly focus on the Leo region of space. And it's quite interesting because in these low Earth orbit regions, we have to deal with atmospheric drag. So altitude plays a really important role when it comes to what the debris population looks like at different altitudes. So at lower altitudes, the atmospheric drag experienced by the objects is higher because the atmospheric density is higher. So we have this setup where not all of the debris that's generated necessarily stays in the environment. It gets naturally removed and burnt up in the atmosphere over time. And as a result, some people refer to these orbits as like self-cleaning orbits. Yeah, but that certainly doesn't mean that there isn't any debris there. Yeah. And the collision risk is still can't be ignored. And there's still definitely debris there. Yeah, it's fascinating. It's quite sad. It's quite confusing because if we think about the first satellite that went into orbit, that was Sputnik in 1957. And then we've just seen this problem grow and grow and grow. So can you kind of contextualize how much of a growing issue this is and where have we seen that really start to accelerate? Sure. Yeah. So I mean, unfortunately, growing is indeed the word for it. Is he? As you rightly say, Sputnik was the first spacecraft. But actually, the first piece of debris was probably the Vanguard One satellite, which was sent up in response in 1958. So even though Sputnik was first, both it and its launch vehicle re-entered in the atmosphere a few months later, whereas Vanguard One is still up there today. The populations have only really continued to grow since. And that's entirely reflective of our increased use of the space environment. I checked the numbers this morning. It's about 15,000 active satellites in orbit, with the majority of those having been launched since 2020. Wow. More than 10,000 of those belonging to one company, by the way. But we're seeing this really rapid growth in the number of satellites in a very short amount of time for context, because I always find this a bit crazy. Just before 2020, they were just under about 3,000 satellites in orbit. So we've really seen a really rapid increase in the number of satellites in a really short amount of time. Sorry. Did you just say it's gone from 3,000 to 15,000 in about six years? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Then it's reflective of how our launch capabilities have changed. And it's really quite a substantial increase. Yeah. And it's clear, we need to get a hold of this. But why is that? Can you just talk us through what is the damage that space debris can cause? And why is it that we're talking about this today? Because we need to be. The damage that space debris can do really varies with the size largely of the debris object. We tend to categorize the different debris populations in different sizes, like I gave examples at the start. The really small pieces of debris, so less than about one centimeter in size, they might damage your spacecraft. So if you've got solar panels, you can create impact craters. I think there's a lovely image from the Hubble solar panels where you can see these impact craters on the solar panels. You know, there's probably a very small piece of debris that caused that. But it does cause damage. And as soon as you get above one centimeter, you start to talk about, well, you might be looking at a catastrophic collision, which essentially means that the spacecraft might lose its capability to operate or, you know, fragment into smaller pieces. So we're more worried about collisions with larger objects, unsurprisingly, because they cause more damage and release more debris. But the consequence of that collision largely depends on where in orbit that happens. So how that risk translates to other objects in orbits around it and below. If the collision happens in really populated orbits, and you see the debris from it, you know, spread out into areas where other satellites exist, or either at the same altitudes or below, then you can begin to have more of a problem. And if we talk about how we try to wind down satellites in space, what is the current process? Sure. So dealing with your spacecraft at the end of its mission is really important. It's an essential part of various international bodies debris mitigation guidelines, where, you know, satellite operators are really encouraged to include a disposal plan. But how operators choose to do that varies slightly depending on the orbital region that the mission is located in. So no matter what, the advice is to passivate your spacecraft, which means to reduce the risk that the satellite will explode by ejecting unused fuel or some other things, so that it's not going to explode unexpectedly. The techniques are different depending on if you're in geostationary orbit, this is low earth orbit. So if you're in geo, it's like a fixed distance above the geostationary operational altitude, where these satellites that are moved out of the way at the end of their life. So they're just shifted kind of away, drifted over like slightly above it. Just like a graveyard in space. Wow. Gosh, of course. Okay. Yeah. And it's like moving your car off the motorway onto the grassy verge over the hot shoulder. Yeah, it's still there, but the collision risk to the remaining traffic is massively reduced. All of this shows though, is that it's not coming down though, it's going up and it's staying up. So that's the example for geostationary orbit. Yeah. But in Leo, it's a bit different, because it's much closer to the earth, you know, so it's far more feasible for us to deorbit these satellites and burn them up in the atmosphere. So spacecraft must reenter the atmosphere within either five or 25 years after the mission has ended. So, I mean, again, if we're talking about the motorway analogy, I always like to think of it as like, you know, there's massive colossal mega highways that exist in the world. You've got like 10 or 15 lanes are stretching across them. You can imagine that you're like driving in the fast lane, and you've got to take the upcoming exit. But in order to get off, you've got to traverse all of those other, you know, nine, 10 lanes worth of high speed traffic in order to get off that slip road. So it's quite a feat, but the closer you are to that slip road exit, rather the lower in altitude you are, the easier it is for you to deorbit at the end of your mission lifetime. And so why is it that we can't just burn up all our satellites on reentry, you know, they're done, they're not serving a purpose anymore. Why can't we just deorbit all of them? Sure. Well, some of them are derelict. They don't have any propulsive capabilities. So then they're just going to stay there. You know, sometimes indefinitely talking about above 1000 kilometers or so, this thousands of years before they would come out themselves. It's curious, because I always think the idea of spacecraft completely burning up in the atmosphere as a sustainability strategy sounds a little strange. It's a far better option than abandoning them. That being said, there are growing concerns about what this impact might have on the Earth's atmosphere. So aluminium and various alloys are commonly used materials in satellite construction. And there are some recent papers that erase some concerns about aluminium oxide gets produced during ablation. Ablation is just a fancy word for burning up in the atmosphere. But particularly the impact that can have on the ozone layer. And they say that we might not see the impacts of that 30 years in the future. But this topic is the inspiration of this really cool satellite. It's known as LingoSat, which is a satellite that's made almost entirely out of wood. I think it's Kyoto University, actually. And it was launched in 2024. I believe that it didn't even use any screws or bolts. I think it was just put together using traditional Japanese methods with a few electronics inside, which is super cool. But yeah, just to see what else can we make these satellites out of that might be a little kinder to our atmosphere. That is fascinating. So on that theme, and I think it's the question that everyone wants to know, when we said we were going to be doing an episode on this topic, and we asked for questions, so many people sent in, what can we do? Is there a way for us to clean up the debris in space? You know, how can that be done safely? And how are people researching that? What are the solutions, Megan? Sure. Yeah, I mean, at this very moment in time, there are certainly technologies that are under development to remove debris. Like I said before, some of them decay naturally, so they don't need removal, but those are a bit higher up or they're really heavy, that they're going to need active debris removal. There's companies like Astroscale or ESA's Clear Space Mission. Some of them range from like a giant grabby claw that's attached to a spacecraft with the idea that it would rendezvous with a debris object, grab it with the giant claw and drag it down into lower orbits so that it can decay and burn. But the thing that I always find really fascinating with that technique is that a lot of people forget that these debris objects are not stable, so they're often tumbling, they're rotating as they're moving around their orbit. So if you want to send a mission up there to grab it, not only do you have to get really close to that debris object without colliding, it's no easy feat, but that you would then have to do propulsive burns in order to put your spacecraft in the rotation around the object so that it's essentially in sync with each other, before you could even think about reaching out and grabbing it. All of this while it's hurtling around the earth at many kilometers per second. I don't know about you, but I get a bit dizzy just thinking about that. But there are other options that are being explored. One of them includes possibly firing a laser beam from the ground, essentially in the opposite direction to the debris object's direction of motion, with the idea that you could use the laser to slow it down so that it reduces an altitude and carry into naturally. That one comes with a few, I'll use the word challenges, but we also have things like drag sails. So these are foldout sails that can be either already attached to the spacecraft before it's launched, thus increasing the force that it experiences from atmospheric drag that will hopefully pull it down and have it re-enter and burn up in the atmosphere. So there's lots of weird and wonderful ideas, none of them are actually been proven yet if we have these really huge numbers of large constellation satellites. You can buy the biggest mop in the world, but it's still no match for Niagara Falls. Thank you to Megan Perks. So Becky, can you clear something up for us? Pan intended, absolutely. So there is this assumption that space debris is like this sea of junk that's really close together and we kind of have to duck and dive to avoid it. That's not quite the case though, is it? No, I mean, just because space is really big, like I was trying to think of a good analogy for this, like if you think about how many planes you see on flight radar at one time. And they're always concentrated around big airports and then obviously they spread out, say across the Atlantic and things like that. And then if you think about when you're on a plane, if you look out of a window, how many planes do you see? I mean, sometimes I've got a few planes, like occasionally I might see a plane out of the window, again, if I'm close to an airport, but otherwise you don't tend to see planes out of your window. So despite the fact that airspace is very dense with planes, when you're actually up in the air, you're not swimming through a sea of planes. And if there are any collisions between planes majority of them are on the ground, like actually at airports, right? And not in the sky. So I think it's a similar thing with space junk. There's just lots of places it can go once it's up there. You no longer have two dimensions because you're on the ground, you have three because you have altitude as well. So what we do is we do track the big stuff so that it isn't an issue for say, like, you know, the Artemis mission, for example, recently launched and looped around the moon Artemis 2, right? They did hold that launch for about 10 minutes because they were like, hang on a minute, there is some so a big piece of operating space tech that currently we have to wait to go past. It wasn't necessarily space junk, but they knew that was going to be there. So they held the mission for 10 minutes just to be on the safe side, right? But it's not like it's sort of once it's up there, it's having to constantly maneuver Star Wars Kessel Run style around a lot of space junk, right? But it is the smaller pieces that we tend to worry about when it comes to space junk that can go on track and can be a bit of a danger. Yeah, and uncontrollable, I suppose. Yes. Yes. And so have there been any near misses on thinking like with the International Space Station or like any other missions? Yeah, the International Space Station, the ISS, that's been hit before by space junk. So that's actually left like tiny little holes in like the Canada arm, which is one of the experiments on board and stuff outside the ISS. Back in November 2024, the ISS also had to perform, and I love what they call these, a predetermined debris avoidance maneuver, a P-DAM, just to get away from debris from an old satellite that broke up back in 2015. Again, NASA was tracking. We actually have had a satellite collision before, as Robert mentioned before. So the most famous one was back in February 2009. So it was two communication satellites, one active American communication satellite and one old Russian military satellite that accidentally collided at a speed of 26,000 miles an hour at about an altitude of about 490 miles. Yeah. And it's a really, really big deal when this happens, because a collision like that, you know, sort of completely explodes both satellites, for one of a better word, and you end up with a lot of shrapnel. And so then you have this essentially like a cascade of a lot of smaller debris that's all moving at high speed, which ends up essentially acting like lots of tiny bullets that we can't track. And that's the thing that's hit the ISS before that leaves holes in things like shields and solar arrays, things like that. And so the big danger is something called Kessler syndrome, where that tiny junk then hits into other satellites, destroying nodes, creating another cascade of tiny junk, and so on and so on. You've got like a chain reaction, just a cascade of ever worsening space junk problem over time. So right now, there's thought to be around about 130 million pieces of space junk orbiting Earth, but not all of those are tracked. And then I guess it's just that domino effect, isn't it? Like one goes, and then you can see how that just ripples through all of that. Yeah. So it's a big deal, and it's why a lot of people are trying to solve this. Hi, this is Joe from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly, and earning customer trust has never mattered more. Vanta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure with the most advanced AI, automation and continuous monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SOC2 or ISO 27001, or a growing enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta makes it quick, easy and scalable. And I'm not just saying that because I work here. Get started at Vanta.com. Whatever you're into, reading takes it to a whole new level, because you might be into football. Stepping up to take the penalty. Imagine stepping into their boots. Chapter 12, the weight of 60,000 fans was on the shoulders. Would I become the all-time hero, or the ultimate villain? You might know their lyrics, but have you read their full story? I grew up with my mum's choir. Those harmonies, they spoke to my song. If you live it, read it. Go all in for the national year of reading. Personally speaking, I love it when science and art just come together, and it's even better when it's trying to raise awareness of a problem like space debris. So this is the topic of a photography exhibition by international photographer Max Alexander. And as I mentioned at the start, it's on until the 10th of May, 2026, outside of the Royal Astronomical Society. So here's what happened when I met Max for a whistle-stop tour of his latest work. I am standing in my favourite courtyard in London outside the Royal Astronomical Society, and it's obviously always gorgeous, but today it's even better because there is an exhibition here by Max Alexander, and he's joining me now. Hi Max, how are you? Hello, great to see you. This is amazing. Can you tell us about this exhibition, our fragile space? Absolutely. Well, our fragile space is a photography exhibition. It's about three things. It's about all the economic, scientific and societal benefits we get from space. It's about the growing problem of congestion of satellites and space debris in space, including the impact on astronomy, and what are we doing about the problem of so-called space sustainability and regulation and policy? So let's look at the first chapter of it, if we say. So the benefits of the space industry and the space economy. Can you talk me through some of your favourite images from this chapter? What are we looking at? Absolutely. Well, the first photograph is taken in Chile at the European Southern Observatory of a Spanish astronomer. I took her out from her control room when she was operating the telescope, the very large telescope, and put her out beside the Milky Way, and my background's really in astronomy, so the loss of the night sky is important to me and what we're doing in space, so that's a really important key photograph for me. And just to describe that we have Amelia sat in a chair, kind of lit in the foreground and behind her there's this amazing Milky Way as the backdrop, like the lighting of it. I'm just like, how have you got the light on her face and it still captured the darkness of the night sky? Well, it's actually three of us taking this photograph, so I've got a flash off camera, so if you get all techy here, so it's a 20 second exposure to see the lights of the Milky Way and the stars and the dust lanes, and then we've got her lit by flash and somebody's walking around with a torch as well to light the foreground, so three people to make one picture. It's absolutely beautiful. Thank you very much, so should I talk about some of the other pictures here? Yeah, let's go for it. Okay, so I've got a photograph here from Umet Sat, so they provide the satellites and the data for weather forecasting, but this is a key thing, you know, if we can't use the mid-Earth orbit as where most of these satellites are for weather forecasting, so if those orbits are lost in the future, then you won't be able to provide weather forecasting, so they're one of the project sponsors and they're concerned about that environment. If it gets too crowded and busy up there, it could impact on on the weather forecasting. If we move on to the other chapter, it's like it's the cost of this, right, so what is that balance? We were walking around the exhibition earlier and trying to put the world to right, I think, but you gave a really good analogy of the kind of state that the Earth is in at the moment. Yeah, this chapter is called The Cost of Living, I'm going to use a long word here, it's about anthropogenic change, so how we're really polluting on the land, in the ocean, with plastic in particular, which is an interesting metaphor for space debris, carbon in the atmosphere, I fly a lot for my projects, we're all to blame as a species, and now this fourth domain of space, and it's really in low Earth orbit, it's really just 400 kilometers up in that kind of regime, 400 to a thousand, something like that, and it's really become part of this environment by virtue of putting material up there, so that's to put it in that context, we don't want to ruin that environment like we have on many of these other domains. And it's hard though, because how do you capture that? Because this is the thing with space debris, right, like we talk about it a lot, we're all concerned about it, but we can't see it, so how do you translate that to images to make people who come to this exhibition care and and pay attention to that? Yeah, there's several ways to do it, I mean the use of spaces for us down here on Earth, you can do satellite trails, I do long exposures where I've got a camera where I rotate with the Earth's rotation and do one minute exposures and stitch all those together, so we can see those satellite trails, I've photographed examples of space debris, I've got privileged access because I work in the space industry, space agencies, commercially as well, so every time I go to it we've been to a clean room over a period of a year or so, every time I went to a commercial company to a museum, I asked if I could photograph examples of what's in space and then we created a montage, so the idea is really to make the invisible visible and use art to communicate what's going on in space. What have been some of the hardest images as part of this exhibition that you've created? Well I would say the Pantry EFAN picture with the satellite trails, so I had this sort of this prehistoric Stone Age experience, so this is Pantry EFAN, it's a burial chamber, it's got a 16 tonne capstone, it's been sitting on those three points for 5,000 years, it's just four miles from the Priscilla Hills where the stones from Stonehenge come from and it predates that, and then we have Starlink and the International Space Station and all their satellites and rocket bodies coming over during that time, so it was a really powerful experience to bring those two worlds together, well that was three years ago, this guy's got Bizia in many ways, it's sobering as well. Yeah because we have this monument but then in the night sky it's just covered with lines of different brightnesses, I mean it's almost like a grid, there are so many of them and that's just two and a half hours. It is and it's got Bizia and there are about 15,000 satellites in space now, there are licenses around the world for more than a million, that won't happen but if we go up in order of magnitude to 100,000 with the state of play, there's, well we've been talking here, there's been several collision avoidance maneuvers, there's one every two minutes currently, so if you go to 100,000 we're getting into seconds, so again is that sustainable, so those questions need to be asked and to me sadly it feels like the sky's being scratched. And you've travelled the world with this, you've got so many voices involved, one thing that really stands out for me in this exhibition as well is the section on our shared sky, that you've worked with indigenous communities to translate you know their relationship with the night sky as well because that's so important historically, so what was that like working with those communities and I'm featuring that in your art. It was amazing, it was a unique experience, I worked with about six different communities around the world, so they've used the night sky for thousands of years, I mean I'll give you one example, a square kilometer array observatory in South Africa and Australia, so they're partnering up with wadriere, aborigines in Australia and the Sam people in South Africa and other communities, so a lot of indigenous knowledge of the night sky has been lost, so they're actually helping to redevelop that and to reawaken it and I think this is a renaissance in those countries, they've learnt their lessons from other observatories around the world where they haven't really paid attention to that and actually they're making a real feature of it, but that ties in with all our love of the night sky both western and indigenous and those things are really coming together by the work of places like the square kilometer array. Yeah and it's really important to have that involved, so I know it's a whistle-stop tour, but if we look at this chapter here, that's what we leave behind, I mean there's this amazing photo of Tim Peake, tell us what's this section about and how did it all come together? Yeah well I've got to know Tim quite well, I photographed him while he was training, before he went to space, went to Star City, before launch, so he was very interested in my cameras because it's the same cameras on the International Space Station, so I gave him a bit of informal training before he went, but he did put me on his email list and I trained him for his photography when he was in space, it was very cool to get an email from space on your phone, felt like showing the next person in the street, so it was a unique experience in a photographer's life to do that, it was amazing, so he famously took this photograph here of the Coppola window in the International Space Station, so it's a crack in the glass, they'd have to do a chemical analysis but it may have been caused by something like a fleck of paint, okay, if it had been a bolt that would have been a very bad day for the International Space Station. Sorry I need to respond to that because if that's from a fleck of paint the image of it is like you've got this black square and it just looks like someone's thrown a rock or something at your windscreen, it's that sort of effect, so that would have been very small and it shows just the risk that we're at here right and especially astronauts. Now I think the key thing is you know probably we've got a very informed audience here we know about velocities in space but this debris is traveling 17,500 miles an hour, you've got the approach velocity for the other object, so these are tremendous velocities, 10 times faster than a bullet out of a gun, so a fleck of paint can be a bad day for your satellite, certainly a bolt can be very destructive for that. This whole exhibition does end on a note of hope right, there are people working out here to find solutions to work out what we do about space debris, so who have you worked with on this last section and like what do you think the solutions are? Yeah well I'd like to think we're in the end on an optimistic note, I think really what's coming out of this is an opportunity, an economic opportunity, so the first adopters of these new so-called space sustainability practices will gain commercial advantage from that, so that's important to say. Part of that is you know the observance at least of astronomy and how that impacts on them, so here we've got examples of deorbiting satellites, we've got three different engineers here working on bringing satellites down with a drag sail with a magnet and robotic capture of satellites and rocket bodies. Thank you for showing me around, it's been absolutely beautiful and a lot of food for thought I think as well, so what's next are there any other projects on the horizon? Well I'm working my way through three projects from space situation awareness, so this is my space debris project, I've done one on space weather which was also opened at the Lloyds building here in London and my third opus will be on asteroids, so I've had an asteroid named after me for this work here. I think that's the biggest flex possible, that's amazing. Just wanted to drop that in there if I just to work that in this 12-kilometre wide asteroid and my next project will be on planetary defence and asteroids, so I'd like to save the world, that's my next project. Yeah I mean that's no small task, so good luck with that. Thank you. Thank you to Max Alexander and Robert, the Royal Astronomical Society have been a big supporter of this exhibition too, so how are you working with Max and have you seen any impact of this exhibition and on the wider space industry? Yeah so I have worked with Max on this obviously from the very start with our fragile space and it's the only exhibition yet, it's got this photo of me and it, but because of our work of satellite constellations and light pollution on the ground you know Max approached us and we've talked to him over the years about this stuff and I've put an essay in the catalogue too and he's been photographing astronomers and astronomy for a really long time in the space sector so we're really pleased to work with him on it, so this is the first time the exhibition has come to Burlington House which is the courtyard outside the Royal Astronomical Society, we're part of part of Burlington House itself and we think that many thousands of people are going to see it over the eight weeks that it's on because they're on their way to the Royal Academy to see art exhibitions and it's nice because it's very public so it's started life at Lloyds of London which is a big insurance-breaking house and essentially you know that part of the city you don't get in the building that easily, there's security controls and all the rest of it, what's really great about this one is that you can just walk in and have a look and then after that, and I give credit to Max for this, I mean there's lots of people involved with this stuff, it's always quite difficult to point to one person but I've no doubt it's been influential because he is what I don't know what the kids from my perspective would describe as a visual storyteller right, so he's creating all these fantastic images and people are seeing it and you know we saw the creation of something called the astrakata, I'm going to forgive you if you don't know what that is but if you do it's- Is it like the Magna Carta is that a part of that? Yeah, yeah so King Charles is very big on this right, so you've got the Magna Carta from 800 years ago and then he had the Terrakata which was to care for the earth and the Astrakata is an initiative of something called the Sustainable Markets Foundation which is bringing companies together and the motto is to care for the infinite wonders of the universe, so we could quite easily get behind that, now it was launched I have to say to zero publicity, you know I don't give any press coverage of it at all but you know those are the sect to know about it, very nice logo and so and on the same day we signed something called the Earth Space Sustainability Initiative which is doing the same thing and brings in the wider the wider communities of academics and so on as well and the whole premise is to look after the near space environment, it includes protection of the sky dark and quiet skies that we've talked about before but it very much includes you know reducing space debris, managing that stuff, ensuring that the the space environment is kept in good order and Max has been really involved from the start as well so credit to him for doing all this work. This is the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, astrophysicist Dr Becky Smithurst and science journalist Izzy Clark. So let's get on to some listener questions, Becky Haroon Daniel on Instagram asks, how dangerous is space debris for future humans planning to live in space and on the moon? Well in terms of humans living in space that is one of the biggest issues for space stations right it's dealing with that constantly worsening situation of that cascade of chain reactions of space junk hitting into other space junk, that tiny sort of bullet of space junk moving at thousand miles per hour is a big issue if it hits your space station yes but also if it hits your space suit on an EVA right a spacewalk basically. I personally would not like to go out like that just saying no thank you. It's not much of an issue for like humans thinking about living on the moon in the distant future or the near future if nothing else is where I guess at least not currently anyway so the lunar orbit so the area of space around the moon that satellites in orbit in is fairly free of space junk we've got a few working satellites with the likes of the lunar reconnaissance orbiter and a few defunct satellites have been but otherwise like in comparison to Earth there's absolutely nothing. Ideally though we'd need to keep it that way. The danger is if say NASA or a commercial company or any other space agency want to build a moon base so actually on the surface of the moon or a lunar space station is that construction from that could create a similar space junk problem around the moon with its own worsening situation due to Kessler syndrome and the cascade of collisions and things like this. You know if you think about sort of like how would like a lunar space station be constructed it would probably be mostly constructed like the ISS was on Earth in modules that were then fitted together in space but that would hopefully minimize space junk but at the same time you've still got astronauts having to piece these things together dropping spanners that kind of thing you know like there's still issues so perhaps if people think about this carefully we might be able to avoid the situation that we've ended up with in Earth but I mean you're not going to need things like weather satellites for the moon and things like this so there is going to be a lot less things sent into orbit around the moon anyway but the moon is also smaller so it has less real estate when it comes to orbital space so there are a lot of things to consider. Yeah I feel like we've got a really good record of pretty good grabby hands on. You can say oh humans were here okay cool. Yeah and Robert the pairing pulsar wants to know how can you tell if a shooting star is a meteor or space junk? Yeah thank you Purin, Pulsar and I looked at this and I did have some vague memory of the difference and the key distinction is the incoming speed and the pattern in the sky so meteors and fireballs so now there's natural space debris tends to come in really quickly and if you look at the ETA Required Meteor Shower which is in May then they come in at 66 kilometers a second is the typical speed so really high speed much faster than so the astronauts had to launch the atomists to get to the moon but space debris from Earth orbit tends to go in about between 7 and 15 kilometers a second so it's noticeably slower as it burns up you know you still think that's blazingly fast but of course it's really quite high up as you're watching it so even at that speed it can take a while to cross the sky it can be even minutes it moves more horizontally as well because this meteor shower you know very often stuff is coming in directly there are earth grazers which are an exception but the majority of it is coming straight A whereas the with something like space debris from Earth orbit it's coming at a shallow angle it takes longer to come in and it can be bright it can break into pieces you know if a very unlucky some of that hits the ground and you can see this pattern of debris and I was thinking about this I thought when I was about 13 I remember seeing in my back garden something which looked like a weird meteor you know like something breaking up now this was I can't work 1982 something like that but the 1983 or so but thinking about the pattern of it now I'm thinking did I see re-entering space debris so I've now set myself the homework of trying to find out if there was a big satellite re-entering in 1983 I've got absolutely no idea but yeah please report back exactly somebody on the podcast yeah somebody on the podcast who's listening has any you know way of finding records this will be interesting or gets to me because it was just it was visible over southern UK and it was like oh that was very dramatic so now I think yeah that might have been space debris oh wow and Becky Lodere who is a long-time listener asks is there a risk that any of us here on earth can be hit by a piece of debris that fell from orbit unfortunately Lodere yes it's not a high risk but it's not zero either so some listeners might remember when Skylab was de-orbited back in 1979 it fell to earth with a load of debris that landed over Australia or we also had the recent re-entry of the Chinese Long March 5B rocket over Malaysia a few years back as well thankfully in both of those scenarios no one was hit by anything but large large chunks fell to earth you know you have to remember like a lot of this material does burn up in the atmosphere because it gets so hot but the things that are going to survive that are the big chunks of metal which obviously can cause a lot of damage when they land back on earth and as far as we know there's only one person that's ever been recorded to have been hit by space debris that was a woman called Lottie Williams from Tulsa, Oklahoma USA it's always the USA isn't it always the USA if you ask what country I'd be like the US but she was struck harmlessly thankfully in the shoulder by a piece of space debris in 1997 she picked it up she took it inside she brought it to the authorities they came and got it the next day it was about the size of her hand which I thought was pretty big I'm like harmlessly in the shoulder like it's about the size of your hand yeah that she wasn't hurt by that okay yeah and it was thought to have come from a delta 2 rocket was what it was thought to have come from so yeah I mean like I said chances not zero yeah still that and so there are many different estimates on the chance of space debris hitting someone most are in the sort of one in 10 000 range but that's the chance of any single person on earth being hit at any one time like anywhere in the world the chances of like one specific person being hit such as me or you listening right now are more like the order of one in a trillion right yeah vanishingly small but not zero exactly and actually when I was walking around the exhibition with max there are parts of it where he shows who else works in the space sector and there is a photo of the people working at Lawyers of London who are like a space insurance group and they he also featured a space lawyer and you like all of these people that have to think about these things yeah yeah I love that idea of like a space actuary it's like what are the chances of someone being hit and killed by space debris and a company then having to pay I like that's just crazy that that is now conversations that people are having like in offices around the world yeah yeah yeah yeah the situation that we have created for ourselves well on a good note Robert Astro Pete 5 wants to help and they ask are there any citizen science projects to get involved with surrounding space debris so the answer is yes sort of but not like the ones we're used to in things like the zooniverse which brings together all these citizen science projects where you can look at astronomy data you know you can do things like find exoplanets classically identify galaxies all that sort of stuff big of galaxy and I really encourage people to look at that I can do my phd thanks to galaxy do there you go back Becky's phd was sorted because of that so but the so there are things there's something called the c satl web resource which it seems to be very very anarchic in other words isn't really particularly leading it but people just contribute things and they're encouraged to report observations and they sometimes have quite sophisticated equipment because I guess if you're looking and tracking pieces of debris you know you need I mean you can do big satellites with the pericardocidus right but if it's some it's very small you probably need a reasonably sophisticated telescope so there are sort of adjacent things the University of Plymouth has just announced this cosmic dust in the city project which is more about collecting evidence of natural micrometer rights I thought I would give it planks it's quite fun anyway it seems to involve putting trays on your reef to collect debris from space which sounds quite fun and then there's and how much bird poop do you think those trays collect? I there will be some I think we can assume there's going to be some maybe it's definitely a ratio of space to create a bird poop of those trays I've been I'll leave that to the researchers to answer that question but it depends where you live but I'm sure you're right yeah the and then there's the sat hub section of the IE center of the protection of dark and quiet sky and that's what with observers tracking satellites and some of those might lead to debris and they've got you know pairs of binoculars and a good knowledge of the night sky the very least so they can say where they are in the sky so you can help with those things I think we should include the link to them in the show notes and so on but the Bec is nodding nicely at that point yes I'll find them and I'll put them in the show notes excellent excellent so I do encourage people to help if you've got some equipment and a modicum and knowledge of the sky it's probably going to help it's not the easiest thing to get but it is really valuable I have to say that you know being involved with it from even the dark and quiet skies perspective we really really need the data it's really helpful if people contribute to this effort so good shout Astrid Pete we really appreciate it yeah so nice and thank you to everyone who sent in your questions please do keep sending them in you can email them to podcast at ras.ac.uk find us on instagram at supermassivepod or if you've joined the supermassive club where there is a link also in the show notes you can just post on the forum and we'll take a look so shall we finish with some stargazing Robert what should we be looking out for in May yeah we're going to divide into the northern hemisphere first for reasons we'll come to in a minute so late spring is a really good time to see galaxies still you know it's the milky way which we all love is out of the way kind of it's around the horizon so instead of looking into our galaxy you're looking out of it so that means you see things that are outside the galaxy including lots and lots of galaxies and there's less stars and fewer stars in that direction and less obscuring dust and there are these things we've talked about like the Virgo cluster of galaxies you know you can get a medium-sized telescope see loads and loads of galaxies nearby the Virgo itself is high in the south with the bright star spiker and if you look higher up because I was thinking about this a bit good targets you can see the whole diversa major the great bear centered on the plow which you know or the big dipper if you're in the US it's got galaxies like messi 81 and 82 and they look really good actually I was looking at the other night and I thought these are you know one looks like an edge on galaxy one looks like a sort of irregular one they're not bad you know there's a one that's kind of spiral almost spirited there was always a really hard to see the arms but you know they look pretty good and then there are globular clusters these are things again that you tend to see in that you know well actually all over the sky but there are some stand-up ones like messi a3 and bowties and these can have tens or hundreds of thousands of stars in them and they look round and fuzzy in a pair of binoculars but if you get a bigger telescope they really do they look like they can marry it's a myriad of stars these really beautiful objects so if you ever get a chance to say public observing somewhere and you look at something like that it's really incredibly special special rather and there's also a so-called hidden treasure there was a astronomer called Stephen James O'Meara who catalogued these objects people hadn't seen and the the one he pointed out is that the constellation coma berenices which is up above Virgo uh berenices's hair which is a beautiful name although it's actually quite modernish you know it's in only a few hundred years old it was it was designated that's very well known for its galaxies but it actually is an example of a big open cluster so you can just look at it you know take a actually nothing other than a pair of binoculars is going to help because the telescope will only see a tiny part of it but you can enjoy the view there okay so that's a lot for the galaxies and stars what about planet wise what can we see yeah so planet wise Jupiter it's we're getting to a bit of a fallow period so Jupiter is sinking down into the sunset Venus is kind of coming up towards it getting easier to see they'll actually get quite close together in June and there so Venus is getting further than the Sun in the sky and if you look with the telescope your seat's getting closer to the earth it's getting bigger but the phase is shrinking as well sadly the two comets we plugged last month didn't come to that much I know one of them was destroyed as it went around the Sun so I was watching the so-ho images and seeing this thing coming in and then you know we looked to look and there was just a little plume of dust coming up so that was very sad so that was that and the other one pan stars in the morning sky wasn't as bright as we were hoping for but solar activity is still great so we had a we had a report of a brighter rural display even from north-northwest so that's still going on there are still sunspots there are still displays in the northern lights not likely we're a couple years ago but this is around and we've also had a message from a new listener Annalise in New Zealand Hi Annalise, welcome. She said she's recently got into space thanks to Project Hail Mary and The Artemis II launch. What a time. And says is there any chance that she could get a southern hemisphere stargazing check she's already planning to see the Lyrid meteor shower but what else is out there? Yeah so hi Annalise it just makes me think I want to be in the southern hemisphere looking at the skies there because in many ways there's so much better but you know no obvious justification for immediate trip but I'd like it um so the Lyrids are April. You should totally do a podcast recorded in the southern hemisphere for anyone southern hemisphere. I was like oh we should get them over there yeah so we just like yes if anyone would like to host us thank you please let me know email podcast at rs.oc.uk thank you. Frankie I'll camp if it gets us there. Yeah anyways so so the Lyrids are an April shower so I hope you had a good view first of all but in May you've got the Eto Aquarius meteor shower just coming up and that's actually best for observers in southern countries you might get say 30 an hour that you can see on between the fifth and the sixth of May can say in the north as well it's just less good um there is a problem which is there's a waning gibbous moon so that'll wash out that that's a pretty fat looking moon it'll wash out a lot of the meteors but there'll still be some and if you you know you stand maybe it would be hind you you might see a few and you're also lucky enough to be heading into the southern winter if lucky is the right word but you get the darkest nights and you get the view of the heart of the Milky Way Sagittarius and Scorpius really spectacular and even now you can see Virgo high up in the north galaxy's well placed for the south as well as the north um and higher up is Rigel Kentaurus Alpha Centauri so that you're closer start to the sun the one of the closest starts the sun cracks the southern crosses high up there as well and the southern Milky Way is already looking pretty good and I'd look out for things like the jewel box cluster which is a beautiful colorful open cluster you know it's great with the pair of binoculars but pick those binoculars up look at the Milky Way because Scorpius and Sagittarius will soon be there and they'll be almost overhead in the southern hemisphere and that is a really special sight so we're not at all jealous of your spectacularly beautiful skies yeah I've seen Sagittarius low down before but never overhead like that so I've just never been in like the southern hemisphere winter because I'm always like well it's nice in the northern hemisphere I'm gonna stay yeah need to go yes yes and uh if anyone is listening in the southern hemisphere and gets a photo of any of that then do send it our way but I think that's it for today we'll have our usual Q&A in a few weeks time and then we'll be back with another main episode after that. Contact us if you try some astronomy at home it's at supermassivepod on instagram or you can email your questions to podcast.ras.ac.uk and we'll try and cover them in a future episode but until next time everybody happy stargazing. Hi this is Joe from Vanta in today's digital world compliance regulations are changing constantly and earning customer trust has never mattered more. 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