Opinion: We should shift the conversation about space to satellite debris

In the past year, there have been about 16 million conversations about space on social media – but just 1 percent of the discussion has focused on the serious problem of “space junk.”

How do we know? With 2021 being the year of billionaires in space, we had a hunch the number of online discussions about “space” has spiked dramatically. However, we believed very few people were talking about space junk or debris, so we decided to conduct research to see if we were right.

According to a social listening analysis conducted by consultancy Point 600, there were 15.8 million mentions about “space” in social media conversations between November 11, 2020, and November 11, 2021.

However, just about 1 percent, of those online conversations were about “space junk.” Only 4,379 specifically mentioned the emerging term, “space environmentalism.” That’s just 0.03 percent of all online space conversations in the past year.

The number of online conversations about space environmentalism may currently be small but the problem of space junk is big – and it’s dangerous. Right now, there are up to 40,000 space objects we can track through near-space, and only about 4,000 of them are operational. We believe there are up to 1 million pieces as small as a fleck of paint we can’t track but can still cause damage to satellites and endanger the lives of our astronauts.

How do we know? We keep tabs on these space objects at the University of Texas in real-time via ASTRIAGraph, which computes informed predictions on the space debris hurdling just a couple of hundred miles above our heads anywhere on Earth at any given moment.

The year’s two biggest space spikes in space conversations happened when Amazon’s Jeff Bezos flew himself into orbit July 20 via his Blue Origin aerospace company, and again October 13, when he rocketed nonagenarian William Shatner up for 10 minutes, making the Star Trek actor the oldest person ever in space.

We’ll never forget a quote from Bezos upon his return to Earth last summer: "... we need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry and move it into space, and keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is."

That comment only provided rocket fuel to our quest to prevent space from continuing to be Earth’s unregulated dumping ground. We’re setting out to get people everywhere to talk about space environmentalism via a 360° immersive docuseries called “Shifted Space.” In September, we began shooting on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, and we interviewed several experts at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference. We’ll continue exploring the connections between land, sea and sky with additional episodes shot in New Zealand, Japan, Alaska, Germany, Scotland, Egypt, and here in Texas, home to Blue Origin and SpaceX facilities and NASA Johnson Space Center. The 360° docuseries will be distributed via streaming platform and a VR headset that will allow users to interact with the International Space Station, experience near space with the debris tracked by the ASTRIAGraph, and even the locales we’re shooting globally in 360° film.

It’s time we do something about sustainability, safety and security in space, and we can start by getting people and government leaders globally to talk about the problem. We seek to recruit empathy across humanity and persuade everyone to embrace stewardship as if our lives depend on it. This stewardship must be extended to the very space environment from which many businesses profit. Ultimately, though, it’s government leaders who are responsible for the satellites they put into orbit on behalf of companies.

Jah is professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas, and chief scientific adviser to Privateer.

Reilly is professor and founding director of the Texas Immersive Institute at Moody College of Communication at UT.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: We should shift the conversation on space to satellite debris