NASA is testing plastics that can mitigate radiation in spaceships or space suits. They’re light and strong, and they’re full of hydrogen atoms, whose small nuclei don’t produce much secondary radiation.
“You’re actually making the problem worse,” says Nasser Barghouty, a physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.Ī better solution? One word: plastics. When these particles knock into the atoms of aluminum that make up a spacecraft hull, their nuclei blow up, emitting yet more superfast particles called secondary radiation. Aside from cancer, it can also cause cataracts and possibly Alzheimer’s. This is space radiation, and it’s deadly. Outside the safe cocoon of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, subatomic particles zip around at close to the speed of light. Essential to the future of space travel: world peace. If someone (like China?) starts blowing up enemy satellites, “it would be a disaster,” says Holger Krag, head of the Space Debris Office at the European Space Agency. That might be a century hence-or a lot sooner if space war breaks out. Put decommissioning programs in 90 percent of new launches or you’ll get the Kessler syndrome: One collision leads to more collisions until there’s so much crap up there, no one can fly at all. They’ll jettison extra fuel, then use rocket boosters or solar sails to angle down and burn up on reentry. So starting now, all satellites will have to fall out of orbit on their own.
Pulling the sats out of orbit isn’t realistic-it would take a whole mission to capture just one. Mission control avoids dangerous paths, but tracking isn’t perfect. Some 4,000 orbit Earth, most dead in the air.
Whipple shields-layers of metal and Kevlar-can protect against the bitsy pieces, but nothing can save you from a whole satellite.
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