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• THE LUNAR EXPLORER ARCHIVES
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• DEEP SKY

A R C H I V E S

What are the small white dots which appear in this sequence, showing a few instants of the Orbital Training Operations (here, simulation of the rendez-vous between CSM and LM) which were carried out by the Apollo 7 Crew (whose Astronauts were Donn Eisele, Walter SChirra and Walter Cunningham)? Just "debris", such as, in this case, small pieces of painted plate which detached from the Spacecrafts just before and during the operations.

In time, as many of you probably know, the amount of "debris" (which is nothing more than "space trash") existing around the Earth has increased so much (just think about old, abandoned and forgotten satellites, rockets exploded unexpectedly and, strange but true, several tools and other equipment lost by Astronauts while performing EVAs - Extra Vehicular Activities) that they could actually become real projectiles capable of damaging - even in an extremely serious ways - existing and fully operational satellites and Space Stations.

It is true, also, that many debris, in time, fell and/or will fall down to Earth, but many more of them will stay exactly where they are now, thus making the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) an increasingly dangerous and hostile environment.

What we are describing hereabove, is the so-called Kessler Syndrome (also known as Kessler Effect, or Collisional Cascading - or even Ablation Cascade): a theory proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler, in 1978, foreseeing a scenario where the density of objects (i.e.: debris) present in the Low Earth Orbit shall be high enough, some day in the relatively near future, that collisions between these objects shall cause a real and continuous cascade of orbiting debris – meaning that each collision generating orbiting debris shall also increase the likelihood of further collisions causing the generation of MORE orbiting debris, and so forth.

The major and most serious implication of the Kessler Syndrome is that the distribution of debris in the Low Earth Orbit, in a certain amount of time (probably a few decades from today) might render Space Exploration and even the use of simple satellites, either difficult or maybe even unfeasible for centuries.