The final frontier is getting messy. Debris -- including defunct satellites, abandoned fuel tanks, tools dropped by astronauts and fragments from satellite collisions -- is in orbit around the Earth and, depending on altitude, can remain so for many years. Right now, more than 128 million pieces of debris smaller than a half inch are in orbit, and about 34,000 pieces of large debris.
A new project is tackling how to manage the problem of space's mess, employing Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize-winning work on the governance of common resources. The project is co-led by Scott Shackelford, associate professor of business law and ethics in IU's Kelley School of Business and executive director of IU's Ostrom Workshop, and Jean-Frédéric Morin, professor at Université Laval in Québec. Funding is from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Why worry about space junk down here on planet Earth? For some very key reasons, Shackelford says.
"Our society relies on satellites," he said. "By 2018, more than 8 million Americans were already getting their internet from satellites, a number that will likely explode as firms like SpaceX finish new constellations of thousands of microsatellites. This infrastructure can be damaged by debris, threatening not only the internet but weather forecasting, geolocation and various types of communication systems.
Image via Indiana University.
Image via NASA ODPO.