Asteroids, space junk and the gravity of consequence

Raju Korti
I often wonder if the ancient proverb “what goes up must come down” was meant not only for human ambition but also for our reckless adventure into space. After reading a recent article on the mounting threat of space debris, that thought became sharper. Since Sputnik’s lonely beeping in 1957, nearly 20,000 satellites have been thrust skyward. Seventy percent of them still hang in orbit, while others have either broken apart or plummeted back to Earth. We call it space junk, but that term hardly captures the menace.

Just ask the residents of Mukuku village in Kenya, who woke up one December morning to find a smouldering ten-foot-wide titanium ring in their fields. It had fallen from the heavens, defying our illusion of control. Had it landed on homes, the story might have been told in tragedy.

Every other day, NASA warns of asteroids brushing too close for comfort. In the last five years alone, hundreds of such alerts have been issued, making one wonder whether the agency should set up a full-fledged Department of Asteroids. The frequency is almost comical, if not for the lurking threat. Asteroids may be ancient wanderers, but our contribution is newer and no less ominous: more than 600,000 pieces of man-made debris spinning above us at 18,000 miles an hour. From paint flakes to abandoned satellites, each one is a bullet without a trigger, waiting for collision.

Do we have a dumping ground for such detritus of human progress? None yet. And the irony is bitter. We cannot rid ourselves of mountains of garbage on Earth, and now we have extended our footprint of waste to the skies.

The international community treats this issue with the kind of distracted awareness one reserves for a distant storm. Yet every year, the risk grows. From what I understand, the number of tracked debris has risen sharply, and already 36,000 large chunks threaten to make Low Earth Orbit a perilous no-go zone. If that day comes, exploration may stall, communication networks may suffer, and the promise of space could turn into an obstacle course of our own making.

Perhaps the lesson is a philosophical one. Civilizations may dream of reaching the stars, but unless they learn to clear their mess, the heavens will remind them of their limits. Just as empires crumble and towers fall, so too must space-borne relics return to Earth. Sometimes gently, sometimes with fire. The skies, after all, were never meant to be a landfill.