Increase in space junk could lead to war, Says Russian Scientists

STEADY increase of space junk floating around Earth could lead to a political row or even war if damage to military satellites were to be mistaken for an attack, Russian scientists have warned.

Space agencies in the US and Russia track more than 20,000 pieces of space junk measuring larger than 10cm across in order to prevent any damage to satellites or spacecraft.

However, it is estimated than there could be billions of smaller fragments that are not monitored.

What’s more, as the debris continues to collide with other pieces of space junk, it continues to break down into smaller fragments.

Made up of old satellites and other discarded man-made objects, space debris poses the greatest threat to satellites in low Earth orbit, as well as the International Space Station.

Researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow state that any collision with a military satellite represents a “special political danger”.

In a study published in the journal Acta Astronautica, astrophysicist Vitaly Adushkin warned that such a collision ‘may provoke political or even armed conflict between space-faring nations’.

He suggested that it would be difficult to determine quickly whether any damage to satellites was accidental or a deliberate attack.

In 2013 a Russian satellite, Blits, was damaged after colliding with debris from an old weather satellite that was shot down by China several years earlier in a missile test.

Data in the study from Russian space agency Rocosmos shows that the International Space Station was forced to take evasive action to avoid colliding with space debris five times in 2014.

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