Russian Satellite rendered useless after Chinese Space Debris hit it; Who will clean the Space Debris?

With so much satellite debris out there in the space, it is becoming a nuisance and this threat will keep growing!  Now, the Chinese satellite debris has made Russian satellite unusable after its debris collided with the Russian satellite.

A piece of space debris left over from a 2007 Chinese missile test collided with a Russian satellite earlier this year, rendering the satellite unusable, a researcher said Saturday.

The collision appears to have happened January 22. That’s when it’s thought a piece of the Feng Yun 1C weather satellite, which was destroyed in the 2007 missile test, accidentally hit the Russian satellite, said T.S. Kelso, a senior research astrodynamicist at the Center for Space Standards & Innovation.

The collision changed the orientation and orbit of the Russian satellite, which was being used in scientific experiments, Kelso said. It may have also damaged it. Source

One wonders what the Russians will do now?  Because the loss is in millions!

I often wonder with so many countries sending satellites to space around Earth, and so much debris being created – how does mankind clean all that up?  Was looking and found that the Swiss Space Center at EPFL, had recently launched a CleanSpace One to clean the space garbage out.

The Earth’s orbit is full of all kinds of floating debris; a growing crowd of abandoned satellites, spent rocket stages, bits of broken spacecraft, and fragments from collisions are rocketing around the planet at breathtaking speeds. NASA keeps close tabs on at least 16,000 of these objects that are larger than 10 cm in diameter. When an operational spacecraft such as a satellite collides with one of them, serious, costly damage can result; often the satellite is complete destroyed. And the collision itself then generates thousands more fragments, further exacerbating the problem.

“It has become essential to be aware of the existence of this debris and the risks that are run by its proliferation,” says Claude Nicollier, astronaut and EPFL professor. To move beyond mere rhetoric and take immediate action to get this stuff out of orbit, the Swiss Space Center at EPFL is launching CleanSpace One, a project to build the first prototype in a family of “de-orbiting” satellites. (link)

Wonder how many of such “cleanup operations would be required to clean all the debris up… and why would any country really invest in it?

Featured Image courtesy CNN, features – The BLITS satellite now faces away from Earth and is unusable, according to the Center for Space Standards & Innovation.