My Take | Undeclared space race between US and China needs guardrails
Debris, upper atmospheric pollution and militarisation of near-Earth zone will worsen unless both nations acknowledge their responsibility
Besides threatening other functioning satellites, vehicles and space stations, of which there are currently two, space junk can drop into decaying orbits and break into bits and pieces that pose a serious danger to life, limb and property when they reenter the atmosphere but fail to completely burn up.
As it’s usually the case, the US loves to point fingers at other countries, especially China, while ignoring often worse problems of its own making.
The space junk problem goes beyond alleged Chinese failure at notification. Even professional astronomers can track space junk, accurately estimate their sizes and weights, and work out their trajectories. One must assume the US Space Command and Nasa have far superior technologies to do the tracking with or without Chinese cooperation. After all, the whole point of military science is to track, target and destroy, in this case, in space.
The real issue is that China and the United States are locked in an undeclared space race – what else! – both commercially and militarily.
