Welcome to Rocket Report 8.14! The federal government has been shut down for over a week now, but it has had little effect on the space industry. Military space operations continue unabated, and NASA continues preparations at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of the Artemis II mission around the Moon early next year. The International Space Station still flies with a crew of seven in low Earth orbit, and NASA’s fleet of spacecraft exploring the cosmos remains active. What’s more, much of what the nation does in space is now done by commercial companies largely (but not completely) shielded from the trappings of politics. But the effect of the shutdown on troops and federal employees should not be overlooked. They will soon not receive their first salaries unless political leaders reach an agreement to break the deadlock.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small, medium and heavy-range rockets, as well as a quick look at the next three launches on the schedule.
Danger from dead rockets. A new list of the 50 most concerning space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, mostly dead rockets abandoned to hurtle into space at the end of their missions, Ars reports. “The stuff that’s left before 2000 is still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented Oct. 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited in the last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. This is important to note, especially with some worrying trends at the moment.”
LEO trash …The worrying trends primarily concern China’s actions in low Earth orbit. “The bad news is that since January 1, 2024, we have abandoned 26 rocket bodies in low Earth orbit that will remain in orbit for more than 25 years,” McKnight told Ars. China is responsible for abandoning 21 of these 26 rockets. Overall, Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight’s Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia’s SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the top 50 spots. An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions obstructing LEO with more and more space debris, a scenario called Kessler syndrome.
