Many people must have noticed the news that China's space station has been hit many times, and similar collisions still occur from time to time. In this regard, some people have begun to speculate that it could be that some hostile countries are deliberately making small moves against the mainland in the field of space? Now that the truth has been revealed, the murderers have been locked, that is, the space junk that has drifted to the outer periphery of the earth.
In fact, since the beginning of mankind's foray into space, this kind of thing has been expected. Long-term space exploration has brought about the development of science and technology, but it has also created a large amount of space junk, including scrapped satellites and scattered probe debris. And China is not the only one affected.
When it comes to space debris, the official explanation is that all man-made objects in the Earth's orbit or re-entry into the atmosphere have failed, which is "space junk" to put it bluntly. According to official statistics, as of 2021, the number of space debris found with a size of more than 10 centimeters has far exceeded 23,000, but there are still 7,000 that have not been accurately observed, and the number of space debris between 1 and 10 meters has already reached nearly one million, and this is still according to conservative statistics. In short, there is now a huge "garbage dump" above the heads of mankind, and only 10% of all the man-made spacecraft sent by humans over the years can maintain normal operation, and the remaining 90% are space junk.
It is worth mentioning that due to the influence of the special space environment, the flight speed of space debris is extremely fast, and the extremely fast flight speed is often accompanied by strong impact and lethality. According to the analysis of professionals, if a space debris weighs 10 grams and crashes into a satellite at a speed of 7 kilometers per second, then the hit satellite is likely to be penetrated within 1.5 seconds, and may even be directly destroyed. If you still can't understand it, imagine the collision of two cars traveling at 100 kilometers per hour, and the effect is similar to this.
What's even more worrying is that these space junk have their own reproductive properties, they collide with each other, and they hit other satellites, and this series of processes will cause new "space debris" to appear, which are like cancer cells. It has been disclosed that the International Space Station, which has served in the space field for 20 years, is covered with traces of "bullet marks", with hundreds of dense impact points, and even solar panels have been knocked out of dents, and some places have been directly penetrated.
It is foreseeable how serious a threat these uncontrolled space debris will pose to the continental space station. Of course, the mainland is not without a coping strategy, and one of the main tasks of the recent high-profile Shenzhou 18 landing in space is to carry some "protective armor" up. It is reported that this time, the Shenzhou-18 crew will carry out two or three out-of-cabin missions, and on the basis of the existing space debris protection measures, they will focus on installing "debris protection and reinforcement devices" for key extravehicular cables, pipelines and other equipment.
In fact, the continental space station also embarked on several "passive defense" measures. For example, the space station can give full play to its own radar and optoelectronic equipment, with the help of which it can scan things near the space station in advance, so as to reserve time for itself to react. Another example is to launch a "cleaner" to go up, and the mainland's "Aolong-1" will focus on this work, taking the initiative to remove the debris of the aircraft to prevent the failed satellite or debris from crashing into the big cities on the earth. At the same time, the mainland will also cooperate with certain countries to establish flight safety communication with other countries by announcing the orbital parameters of the space station to reduce the occurrence of accidents. All in all, China will not give up on developing in the field of space, and one day, it will find an effective way to solve space junk.