Unser Müll im All / Outer Space, our garbage dump by Zeit Online

Space debris poses a threat to both satellites and future space missions. The littering of space with defunct satellites and old rockets has accelerated dramatically these last years, mainly due to space launches from the private sector, above all Elon Musk’s Starlink project. Experts warn that soon a chain reaction could unfold, where fragments from collisions make parts of Earth’s orbit dangerous to use. With the help of interactive storytelling and an exclusive data analysis, our project shows how big the problem already is, while also describing what is at stake and what could be done to improve the situation.

The data is more accurate and complete than many publicly available catalogs of space debris, which often include positions only for objects that can be tracked by radar. However, this is not possible for debris less than ten centimeters in diameter. Here, only simulations of past collisions and explosions can estimate how much debris was created in each case and how it has spread in orbit over time. Esa uses a model called Master (Meteroid And Space Debris Terrestrial Environment Reference) for this purpose. In the dataset we used, more than 500 space debris events from the past were tracked and combined with data from measuring stations, according to Esa. The computational effort for this is considerable, but in the end a fairly accurate picture of the space debris situation emerges.