China wants to clean up space junk circling the Earth

By Zhang Xuefeng
Published: June 11, 2015 7:00 p.m. ET

Shutterstock/Chungking
Hangzhou, we have a problem...
BEIJING (Caixin Online) China has established a national agency to boost efforts
aimed at tackling the growing threat that space junk poses to its space program
s.
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The new organization was formed by Chinas space agency, known as the State Admini
stration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, and the Chine
se Academy of Sciences, a government research body. It is to research space debr
is, including non-functional spacecraft, abandoned parts of launch vehicles and
other debris.
Xu Dazhe, director of the space agency, said the body will study, track and mane
uver debris to protect the countrys space endeavors. It is also intended to make
better use of the CASs observatories, which can be used to monitor space trash.
In 2003, China became the third country, after Russia and the U.S., to put a man
into space. It says it wants to launch a space lab from 2020 to 2022; make mann
ed voyages to the Moon by 2030; and send an unmanned craft to explore Mars no ea
rlier than 2020, after a failed attempt in 2013.
A potential risk to those plans is a large amount of garbage floating around Ear
th. The U.S. space agency NASA estimates 20,000 pieces of debris larger than a s
oftball are orbiting Earth. They travel at speeds of up to 7,800 meters per seco
nd, fast enough to damage a satellite or spacecraft. When China fired a test mis
sile at an old weather satellite in 2007, it created more than 3,000 piece of de
bris, NASA said.
China started tracking and studying space garbage under a plan put in place in 2
000. That plan has seen its scientists take abandoned satellites off their orbit
s to pave the way for more launches, state media has said.
The country has launched 129 vehicles into orbit, including manned spacecraft an
d telecom satellites. Scientists say that debris comes within 100 meters of spac
ecraft or satellites an average of 30 times per year. They also warn that some o
f the floating garbage could reenter Earths atmosphere, potentially doing harm on
the ground.
Tian Yulong, chief scientist at the space administration, said tackling space de
bris poses a challenge for scientists around the world.
Precisely locating debris and measuring its proximity to a spacecraft and the pos
sibility of a collision requires greater cooperation to develop tracking capabil
ity and a network of information sharing, he said.
In 1977, the then Soviet Union launched a reconnaissance satellite called the Ko
smos that malfunctioned and reentered the Earths atmosphere on January 24, 1978.
Radioactive debris from the satellite spread over an 800 kilometer swath of nort
hern Canada, a mess that cost $14 million to clean up.
Rewritten by Li Rongde
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-wants-to-clean-up-space-junk-circling-the
-earth-2015-06-11