Space Debris

While some space environmental issues are future-oriented and call for proactive action, one space environmental issue already afflicts us: space debris, also known as space junk. For more than 60 years we have launched rockets and satellites and then just left rocket stages and satellites in orbit long beyond their useful lives. Now millions of pieces of obsolete hardware orbit our planet in a junkyard above our heads. Although the space beyond Earth’s atmosphere is large, multiple times already satellites have collided with each other and the International Space Station repeatedly has been threatened by flying garbage. Although nets, harpoons, and ionizers are in development for dealing with this junk, there is no technological solution right now that is both proven and cost effective.

It is embarrassing to turn one’s neighborhood into a trash heap. Even more, this orbiting space debris is dangerous. A tiny screw or even a paint chip that flies at 20,000 miles per hour can destroy one’s space ship. Making things worse, we are moving toward what is called the Kessler Syndrome, in which there exists so much dangerous space debris in orbit, it becomes no longer safe to leave our planet, and humans will have to remain on Earth. We’re not there yet, of course, but we are on a trajectory to realize this tragedy.

Space debris also creates dangers on Earth. While many pieces of junk will orbit for thousands of years, some of this space junk falls back into the atmosphere, changing Earth’s ecology. For instance, the old American space station Skylab landed in a deserted place in Western Australia, but for some time it was feared that it could have fallen on someone’s house in Perth. A Russian spacecraft failed to make it out of Earth’s orbit on its way to Mars, thereby dumping its payload of radioactive plutonium on the ground in Chile. Nuclear powered satellites have vaporized upon reentry into the atmosphere, thus spreading radioactive uranium and plutonium throughout the global atmosphere.

Space junk remains a menace both on Earth and space while it poses environmental justice problems that demand solutions today. There are important justice concerns for astronauts, who risk their lives. There are justice challenges also for all respiring beings, since they must breath the residues left by spacecraft that have vaporized upon reentry. Humans who do not directly consent to space flight yet still have hardware fall on themselves or their property face serious justice issues. Further, and importantly, spacecraft that are disposed of in the ocean create environmental justice threats for the sea beings who are impacted by toxic chemicals and corrosive parts of space equipment that is not designed for undersea applications.

Despite the dangers that space debris poses, Buddhism can help with the problem in terms of its ethical ideals of interconnection and nonharm as espoused by subjects from the field. The table to the right importantly shows that Buddhists insist that humans must be morally responsible for cleaning up the space debris that they have created. This view provides a punch, because a sensed need to take responsibility can close some loopholes in space debris behavioral outcomes while it crucially helps us to see issues more clearly.  If humans truly must be responsible for their space debris, then we cannot regard graveyard orbits, where nothing really is cleaned, or vaporizing debris in the atmosphere, where innocent living beings potentially inhale the toxic vapors of the rich, as complete solutions.  With a clear perception of human responsibility, we genuinely appreciate that these stopgap measures are in fact mere stopgaps and that better solutions are needed.  A coherent sense of responsibility can prevent troublesome complacency on our part.

American Buddhists assert that the Buddhist value of not harming any living beings should sponsor more sustainable space practices for the future. For example, currently NASA recommends pushing obsolete satellites away from Earth, but this strategy ultimately does not solve the central problem of having dead hardware providing potential hazards. Buddhist notions of nonharm can be employed instead to recommend more sustainable approaches to using Earth’s orbit, such as reducing the amount of material that we leave in orbit to begin with, encouraging the uses of sustainable materials, and perhaps developing orbiting recycling centers.

Buddhist nonharm solutions provide additional benefit from the ways that Buddhists in the field extend nonharm to many entities. Rather than caring just for astronauts or for humans on the ground impacted by debris, a true space debris ethic must embrace many natural entities, both in orbit as well as not, both among humans as well as not. The Buddhist notion of interconnection, when combined with nonharm, can be deployed to care for diverse actors in space, on Earth, and under sea, and thus can play a significant role in ameliorating negative space debris outcomes.