Armageddon Redux?

Armageddon Redux?

Remember the movie Armageddon? In it, Bruce Willis and his buddies stop an asteroid of a significant enough size from crashing into the earth and wiping out all life. As outlandish as it may have appeared back then, the threat is indeed real. As it happens, NASA is actively tracking celestial bodies, which are close enough to earth to trigger a collision alarm. Its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission aims to crash an unmanned spacecraft into the wayward celestial object to test whether the impact can alter its course, thus avoiding a collision with Earth.

However human activities of a corporate nature being conducted in the space merit our attention too! As recently as 2021, at least two companies have launched thousands of satellites in the low orbit to provide broadband internet services. Yes, the space is quickly becoming a crowded place! As it turns out, a few of these satellites have already crashed into each other, creating dangerous space debris. The resultant ‘zombie’ satellites are more likely to behave as unguided missiles and crash into the earth.

It is my firm belief that NASA’s DART mission’s scope should be expanded to track these low orbiting satellites as well. To reiterate, the odds of man-made space objects crashing into the earth and causing significant localized damage are just too high to ignore. A global body of space exploring countries should be created and stringent regulations framed to regulate and police all entities involved in space exploration. Let us not turn the space into a junkyard that can literally rain down hell upon us!