Space junk can cause an armed conflict

Ever increasing planet orbiting space junk can cause political tension and armed conflict, say scientists, who warn that even small debris have enough energy to damage or destroy the military satellites, writes The Guardian, quoted by Focus news agency. The researchers point out that the waste from used rockets and other spacecraft are "specific political threat" because of the difficulty of confirming that a functioning satellite was hit by floating in orbit debris and was not attacked by another country. Space agencies of USA and Russia monitor the movement of more than 23,000 debris larger than 10 centimeters, but calculations suggest that the Earth may have half a billion fragments with a diameter of between 1 and 10 cm and trillions of smaller particles.

Garbage carries the greatest risk to satellites in low orbit where debris can hit the spacecraft with a combined rate of approximately 50,000 km / h. In this part of the sky that stretches from 160 to 1900 km above the surface, and are most military satellites.
In a report published in the journal Acta Astronautica, Vitaly Adushkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow he wrote that clashes of space debris military satellites is a "specific political danger" and "could provoke political or even military conflict. The owner of a hit and destroyed satellite could hardly fast to establish the real cause of the incident. "

The warning comes after an incident in 2013 when Russian satellite was damaged. It is assumed that artificial satellite collided with waste that China set up in the overthrow of its own satellite to monitor climate. The Chinese used a missile to destroy the satellite to - action demonstrating an anti-satellite capabilities of the state, leaving in orbit 3,000 waste.

Adushkin supports his thesis with data on the Russian space agency, according to which in 2014 the International Space Station (ISS) five times taken maneuvers to avoid a collision with space junk. The publication was preceded by a report of the National Space Agency of the United States (NASA), which warns that the number of space debris reached the threshold point.

Source: www.sciencealert.com ,https://www.gettyimages.com