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NATO
11 Jul. 2024 17:14 / 10 Jul. 2024
Washington Summit Declaration
issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council
in Washington, D.C. 10 July 2024.
(Source: nato *):
* North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a collective security system.
NATO's headquarters are located in Brussels and near Mons, Belgium.
July 11, 2024, 3:33 PM Key takeaways from the 2024 NATO Summit. Kyiv is on an 'irreversible' path to membership, the bloc formally declared on yesterday - one that will kick off once its war against Russia ends. The alliance said it would provide at least $43 billion in military aid to Kyiv within the next year, but it stopped short of a multiyear commitment that NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg advocated for. The United States, Denmark, and the Netherlands revealed that they have sent the first batch of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, which should be in the skies later this summer. Poland said it will train a unit of Ukrainians living in Poland to be deployed back to Kyiv. And NATO confirmed plans to establish a new command center in Germany aimed at coordinating arms and training logistics for Ukraine. Washington announced yesterday that it plans to start deploying longer-range weapons - including Tomahawk, SM-6, and hypersonic missiles - to Germany in 2026. France, Germany, Italy, and Poland agreed today to jointly develop long-range cruise missiles to address a gap in European defenses that Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed. Despite efforts to counter Russia’s military influence, though, NATO reiterated yesterday that it “does not seek confrontation, and poses no threat to Russia,’ adding that the alliance remains willing to “maintain channels of communication with Moscow to mitigate risk and prevent escalation.” Yesterday, the alliance criticized China for being a “decisive enabler' of Moscow’s war efforts. For Washington’s part, National Security Advisor Sullivan said the United States would continue to impose sanctions on Chinese entities involved in aiding Russia’s effort. South Korean President Yoon argued on today that the Kremlin’s close ties with North Korea are a “stark reminder of the fact that the European security and the Indo-Pacific security are indivisible.” To end the multiday summit, Biden will hold a rare, high-stakes solo press conference today, It will be his first time facing the press alone since November, and it comes amid growing calls for Biden to end his reelection campaign after a poor debate performance in late June. (Source: foreignpolicy *)
* Foreign Policy, an American news publication based in Washington, D.C., U.S., with daily content on its website.
July 11, 2024 3:16pm EDT Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán departed the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., today to meet with former President Trump in Florida. Orbán arrived in the U.S. this week to attend the multi-day NATO summit, which occurs at a time when members remain concerned about Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine and what the future holds for the broader European Union. Orbán has crisscrossed the globe over the past week after assuming the role as president of the European Union. Hungary’s presidency will last six months as part of a rotating leadership scheme for the bloc and does not provide much actual power, but Orbán wasted no time in using that office to start holding discussions with President Zelenskyy, Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi before his meeting with Trump. His visit to Russia shocked many of his peers. The rest of Europe ’has remained less than enamored’ with Orbán, though, especially in light of his foreign visit blitz in the past 10 days. ’A majority of member states already have considerably lowered’ the level of participation in the informal council meetings ’that will be held in Hungary” during the presidency term. In some capitals, also, officials have discussed how to use EU treaties to limit Orbán’s impact. Orbán has long admired Trump, going so far as to invoke the former president with a quip that Hungary would "make Europe great again," and Trump met with Orbán at Mar-a-Lago in Florida in March when ’trying to court’ foreign policy in the U.S. During an interview with German journalist and author Ronzheimer, Orbán said that there is a "very, very high chance that the next American president will be not the same president who is today." He refused to be drawn on questions about President Biden’s fitness for office. (Source: foxnews *)
* Fox News Channel (FNC), an American multinational conservative news and political commentary television channel and website. Headquarters New York City, New York
By ’Aitken
July 11, 2024 6:13 pm CET Turkey and Hungary came to the NATO summit. Hungary spends 2.1 percent of GDP on defense, above the alliance target, and is modernizing its military. Turkey has NATO's second-largest army after the U.S. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán nor Erdoğan, the Turkish president, the pair of’ populists’ - one defending Christian values, the other increasingly Islamist - have broader interests in common. They play their own game. They both ’dally’ with Russia, they hedge on supporting Ukraine and they have foreign policies that often clash with NATO priorities. They're looking to ensure NATO is a purely defensive alliance - in other words that ’it keeps its nose out’ of Ukraine. They're also gearing up for a possible change of government in the United States and cozying up to Trump. Although both Orbán and Erdoğan have broken ranks with the rest of the alliance and met with Putin, their positions on Ukraine aren't exactly the same. The Hungarian leader has sought to undermine NATO's role on Ukraine and ’parrots Putin's talking points on the war’, declaring that Ukraine won't be able to hold out against superior Russian forces. Hungary also has no intention of following the rest of the EU in ending purchases of Russian natural gas. Turkey has declared its support for Ukraine's ’territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence," and does send weapons to Kyiv while maintaining a vibrant trading relationship with Russia - including big gas purchases. Both are wary of entangling NATO in the conflict. Erdoğan cautioned on X that the alliance "should not be made a party to the war when designing steps to support Ukraine." Despite having policies wildly out of line with the rest of NATO, the alliance remains a core foreign policy priority for both countries. Indeed, Orbán even exhibited a sense of deference when he arrived in the summit, physically bowing to NATO boss Stoltenberg and U.S. President Biden while appearing onstage for an official photo. Turkey has much wider interests than NATO. Its army is in Syria and regularly crosses into Iraq. It has tried to form a Turkic bloc that includes ex-Soviet countries like Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It also regularly demands NATO focus more on fighting terrorism, an agenda that serves its national interests. Orbán made an informal appearance at the Turkic summit earlier this month, something that ’earned him a smackdown’ from the EU's top diplomat Borrell. Days before Erdoğan met Biden and Stoltenberg, he showed up in Kazakhstan and attended a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security and defense grouping founded by Beijing and Moscow, and asked for full membership. As soon as Orbán arrived in Washington from his much-criticized meeting in Moscow and Beijing, he sat down with Erdoğan. Later today, he was due to fly to Florida ’to pay court to Trump’ at Mar-a-Lago. Orbán used the NATO summit as his latest platform to preach his self-appointed "peace" mission - an effort to end the war in Ukraine ’on what looks like terms set by Russian leader Putin, the war's instigator’. "The issue of the Russia-Ukraine war was discussed," Orbán's office said in a statement following the meeting with Erdoğan, adding that the Hungarian PM "asked for the support of the Hungarian peace mission in view of the fact that Turkey has been the only successful mediator in the conflict so far." Hungary was the only NATO country that opted out of the alliance's new mission to support Ukraine by coordinating the transfer of Western weapons and training Ukrainian soldiers. Weeks before coming to the summit, Orbán ’forced’ then-Dutch PM Mark Rutte to sign and confirm respect for this position - a necessary ’kowtow’ before he approved Rutte's bid to be the next NATO secretary-general. Turkey ’also put Rutte through the wringer’ before signing off on his candidacy. Now, to the ’chagrin’ of U.S. and European diplomats, Ankara has a new demand: that Turkey gets to host the NATO summit in 2026. Turkey also caused last-minute trouble with the NATO summit declaration, which was issued yesterday evening. Earlier this week, on the advanced stage of negotiation on the wording Turkey "reopened the declaration" on various points. In the end, the declaration mentioned that NATO countries "look forward to meeting again at our next Summit in The Hague, the Netherlands, in June 2025, followed by a meeting in Türkiye." The format (meeting as opposed to summit) and the timing (2026 or later) were deliberately left vague for countries to hammer out the details at a later stage. Ankara also sought to water down the reference to NATO-EU cooperation. The issue has been a sore point for Turkey, whose EU candidacy exists only in name. On this, however, Turkey made less headway - 23 countries share membership in EU and NATO. In a recent interview, Turkish Defense Minister Güler said: “The most effective security organization in the Euro-Atlantic region is NATO ... We think there is no need for any other formation.” In the end, the NATO statement says the alliance "recognises the value of a stronger and more capable European defence that contributes positively to transatlantic and global security and is complementary to, and interoperable with NATO." (Source: politico *)
* Politico, an American political digital newspaper. Headquarters Arlington County, Virginia, U.S.
by ’Lau’
July 11, 2024 12:45 AM EDT Former President Trump will meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Florida today, less than a week after he met with Russian President Putin in Moscow. Orbán will travel to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after the conclusion of the NATO summit in Washington. His visit to Moscow became a central point of discussion at the gathering, where other allies pledged additional air defenses for Ukraine in its continuing campaign against the full-scale Russian invasion that began in 2022. Orbán also paid a visit this week to President Xi in China, following a trip to Azerbaijan earlier this month. Hungary took over the European Union’s rotating presidency July 1. EU officials have criticized Orbán’s travels, arguing they could undermine the 27-member bloc’s positions on global issues. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg told on July 7 that Orbán “made it clear when he came to Moscow that he didn’t go there on behalf of NATO.” “Different NATO allies interact with Moscow in different ways,” he added. The Biden administration has criticized Orbán over his friendly relations with Putin. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has not asked the Hungarian leader to lay the groundwork for some sort of Ukraine-Russia peace deal, according to one of the people familiar with the Orbán visit. The person described the visit, which will take place days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, as more of an informal get-together. 'The visit is likely to fan concerns that the Hungarian leader is working as an intermediary between Putin and Trump'. Trump and Putin 'professed a fondness for one another" during the U.S. president’s first term - often garnering bipartisan criticism. More recently, the Republican leader has said he believed he could convince Putin to end his war in Ukraine and release Americans detained in Russia if he were elected to a second term. The Hungarian leader and Trump have cultivated a close relationship, with Orbán visiting Mar-a-Lago in March. Trump feted him with a tour of his residence, dinner with former first Lady Melania, an hour-long meeting with senior aides, and musical performance by a band covering Orbison songs. (Source: time *)
* Time, an American news magazine based in New York City, New York, U.S.
2:24 AM CEST, July 11, 2024 The European and North American members and their partners in the Indo-Pacific increasingly see shared security concerns coming from Russia and its Asian supporters, especially China. The sternly worded final communiqué, approved by the 32 NATO members at their summit in Washington, makes clear that China is becoming a focus of the military alliance. In this year’s final declaration, NATO member countries reiterated their concerns that China poses “systemic challenges” to Euro-Atlantic security. It was first raised in 2021. In the communiqué, they said China has become a war enabler through its “no-limits partnership” with Russia and its large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base. “This increases the threat Russia poses to its neighbors and to Euro-Atlantic security. We call on the PRC, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council with a particular responsibility to uphold the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter, to cease all material and political support to Russia’s war effort,” read the communiqué, which referred to China by the abbreviation of its official name, the People’s Republic of China. “The PRC cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation,” the document says. Beijing insists that it does not provide military aid to Russia but has maintained strong trade ties with its northern neighbor throughout the conflict. NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg said China provides equipment, microelectronics and tools that are “enabling Russia to build the missiles, to build the bombs, to build the aircraft, to build the weapons they use to attack Ukraine.” The Chinese embassy in Washington yesterday said China is neither a creator of nor a party to the Ukraine crisis. “China does not provide weapons to the parties to the conflict and strictly controls the export of dual-use articles, which is widely applauded by the international community,' said Liu, the embassy spokesman. He said China’s normal trade with Russia is “done aboveboard” and “beyond reproach.” The new wording by NATO was coupled with the warning that Beijing continues to pose “systemic challenges” to European interests and security, Russel, vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute said. ’China’s attempts at divide-and-conquer have instead produced remarkable solidarity between key nations of the Euro-Atlantic and the Asia-Pacific regions,” Russel, the former assistant secretary of state for Asia added. ’The U.S. believes that Europe has influence in Beijing, and that while China will not pay any attention to U.S. condemnation, they will pay attention to European condemnation because just because Europe trades with China, China also trades with Europe,” Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. The alliance said China has been behind sustained, malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation and expressed concerns over China’s space capabilities and activities. It also raised alarms that China is rapidly expanding and diversifying its nuclear arsenal with more warheads and a larger number of sophisticated delivery systems. Liu said China handles such issues “in a responsible manner with transparent policies,’ adding Beijing firmly opposes NATO’s use of regional hotspot issues to smear China and incite a new Cold War.’ It also accuses NATO of overreaching and inciting confrontation in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea have sent their leaders or deputies to the NATO summit in Washington this week. They are partners, not members, of the alliance. NATO and the Indo-Pacific partners plan to launch four projects to support Ukraine, bolster cooperation on cyber defense, counter disinformation and work on artificial intelligence. The NATO members said these projects would “enhance our ability to work together on shared security interests.” In the final declaration, NATO members affirmed the importance of the Indo-Pacific partners to the alliance and said they were “strengthening dialogue to tackle cross-regional challenges.' (Source: apnews *)
* The Associated Press, an American news agency headquartered in New York City, U.S
July 11, 2024 Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán has asked Turkish President Erdogan to support his efforts to launch peace talks to end the Russia-Ukraine War, Orbán’s press secretary 'Hawashi' told Russian news service TASS on July 10. The previous day, Orbán and Erdogan met in Washington, DC on the sidelines of the Nato summit. In a video on Facebook, the Hungarian leader confirmed that he had asked for the Turkish president's support. “The positions of the battling parties are still far apart,” Orbán noted in the video. In his peace efforts, Orbán met with President Zelenskiy on July 2, Russian President Putin on July 5 and Chinese President Xi on July 8. Hungary is holding the presidency of the EU in H2 2024. At his meeting with Putin held on July 5 in Astana, Erdogan has also offered mediation between Russia and Ukraine. However, the Russians have turned a cold shoulder to Erdogan’s offer. (Source: intellinews *)
* bne IntelliNews, a news wire agency and media company. Headquarters Berlin, Germany
July 11, 2024 NATO’s leaders at the summit once again risked disappointing Zelensky by refusing to issue Ukraine a clear invitation to join their alliance. But in a bid to soften any upset, leaders called Ukraine’s path to membership “irreversible.’ They also pledged to provide Kyiv a minimum of 40 billion euros ($43 billion) in military support ’within the next year.” ’We are doing and will continue to do everything to ensure that the day comes when Ukraine is invited and becomes a NATO member, and I am confident we will achieve this,’ Zelensky said. NATO allies have put together a package of support for Ukraine including the pledge of more Patriot missile systems to defend the skies over the war-torn country. President Zelensky today called on NATO leaders, especially the United States, to drop all restrictions on letting Kyiv strike inside Russia with Western weaponry. The leader joined his NATO counterparts after receiving promises of new air defenses for Ukraine and as allies began the transfer of long-promised F-16 jets. Key allies such as Washington and Germany relaxed conditions on Ukraine hitting inside Russia in May in response to Moscow’s offensive toward the second city Kharkiv, but they kept in place some limits on how far and under which circumstances Kyiv could strike. ’If we want to win, if we want to prevail, if we want to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the limitations,’ Zelensky said. ’The only way to hit military targets, missile launchers or airfields which are conducting attacks against Ukraine is to hit military targets on Russian territory, because the frontline and the borderline is more or less the same,’ NATO chief Stoltenberg said. He said there has been ’a Russian campaign organized by the security services to conduct hostile actions against NATO allies, across the alliance, with sabotage attempts, with cyber attacks, with arson, with different types of hostile actions.” The purpose of this campaign is, of course, to intimidate NATO allies from supporting Ukraine, he said. The United States on yesterday announced an important step to bolster NATO’s own deterrence against Russia in Europe by saying it would begin ’episodic deployments’ of long-range missiles to Germany in 2026. The White House said it would eventually look to permanently station them in Germany, and the missiles would ’have significantly longer range’ than current US systems in Europe. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz welcomed the move and said it would help ’securing peace.’ The Kremlin on today struck back, saying it was planning “response measures’ to contain the “very serious threat” from NATO, accusing the alliance of being ’fully involved in the conflict over Ukraine.’ NATO shifted attention eastwards by welcoming the leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. The Washington summit is the third such gathering attended by leaders from the four Asia-Pacific partners. The United States has been pushing its European allies for years to pay closer attention to the challenges posed by China. NATO agreed to several initiatives with the partner countries, including bolstering cooperation against cyberattacks and disinformation, and providing Ukraine non-lethal help. (Source: digitaljournal */ „Written by AFP **„)
* Digital Journal, Canada
** Agence France-Presse, a French international news agency headquartered in Paris, France
Space
Space
July 11, 2024 What on Earth is a Canadian citizen supposed do if they find potentially hazardous space garbage on their private property? Today’s commercialization of orbit - SpaceX and other companies, as well as governments - are producing space debris that could very easily kill people. Sawchuk, a Saskatchewan farmer’s near miss with potentially lethal debris falling from orbit highlights the skyrocketing risks and murky politics of space junk. On his farm dangerous fragments of space debris from the uncontrolled reentry event fell on February 26, 2024. On a photo of the farmer, standing next to what looked like the charred, battered hood of a semitruck covered with woven carbon fiber and a few slightly melted aluminum protrusions, the object looked exactly like debris that fell in an Australian sheep field in 2022, which the U.S. aerospace company SpaceX later admitted was part of a cargo trunk for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. This “trunk” is actually the size of a small grain silo, and is ejected in orbit well before the spacecraft’s atmospheric reentry, to naturally and chaotically reenter on its own and, supposedly, burn up completely. A dramatic increase in space commerce and exploration could soon make such events disturbingly common across the globe. McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian who maintains probably the best public database of launches, reentries and other space activities, confirmed, tracing the path of a SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk ejected by the Axiom 3 private astronaut mission: it had reentered over the Canadian prairies on February 26, 2024. After being cast adrift on February 9, the cargo trunk spent more than two weeks in a decaying orbit. Reaching about 50 miles altitude in the early morning hours of February 26, it began to burn as it plowed at some 17,000 miles per hour through the thickening air. Anyone near Calgary looking up at the right moment could have briefly seen a very bright, messy shooting star as the heavy cylinder melted and broke into pieces. The trunk’s outer layers of woven carbon fiber billowed and unraveled as it fell, likely insulating and slowing the plummeting pieces so abruptly that friction from the atmosphere failed to destroy them as SpaceX engineers had planned. Objects breaking apart high overhead often leave debris trails spanning hundreds of miles; the hefty fragments in Sawchuk’s equipment shed were a testament to many smaller ones undoubtedly generated by this event that are yet to be discovered. People will be finding additional pieces for years, if not decades. The SpaceX company has been launching huge numbers of its Starlink internet broadband satellites since 2019; more than 6,000 are in orbit, and as many as 42,000 are planned. Beyond the disruptive light pollution, atmospheric pollution is skyrocketing from the SpaceX-dominated dramatic increase in launches and reentries - with potentially disastrous global effects. The aluminum oxide produced by sublimating satellites in Earth’s upper atmosphere is a potent and lasting catalyst for chemical reactions similar to those that in the 20th century famously corroded a gaping hole in our planet’s delicate, radiation-blocking ozone layer. The farmer was extremely annoyed that SpaceX was allowed to dump its orbital trash onto his farm, he said, and had assumed the best response was to tell his story in the news media. But most journalists didn’t prioritize following up on a rural Saskatchewan farmer saying he found a piece of space junk. How does one tell SpaceX, a piece of their spacecraft fell on your farm? Who has to clean it up? The answers are completely bizarre. The Outer Space Treaty (OST) and the Space Liability Convention, two agreements were signed between many countries during the space race era of the late 1960s and early 1970s - a time when only national governments were capable of launching rockets into orbit. The treaties mandate that signatory governments have absolute liability for any damage or death caused by anything launched into orbit from their respective countries. In other words, anytime SpaceX launches a rocket, the U.S. government is responsible for any damage it causes in other countries. So far, these treaties have only been fully tested once. In 1978 a Soviet satellite with a nuclear reactor on board crashed into northern Canada, spraying radioactive waste across a Florida-sized swath of land that Indigenous people have relied on for thousands of years. The U.S.S.R. paid Canada a small token compensation for the cursory cleanup effort that ensued, but the effects of that disaster linger to this day. Another precedent-setting scenario - damage claims from a Florida family whose home was recently struck by NASA-sourced space debris - is presently unfolding. Sawchuk’s case was rather different from these, however, with pieces of a spacecraft built by an American private company landing on private property in Canada, without apparent damage. It was a rare chance for independent scientists to study the trunk’s composition and learn more about the pollutants that transparency-averse SpaceX and others are incessantly pumping into Earth’s upper atmosphere. But a sort of “independent study” plan was actually prohibited by international law, because although the trunk fell on private property in Canada, according to the OST it needed to be returned to its country of origin. A representative of SpaceX called Sawchuk in mid-May to arrange plans for retrieving the company’s space junk. Sawchuk first demanded proof that the person was from SpaceX. Then he asked them as compensation to donate money to a skating rink that’s under construction in the nearby town of Ituna. SpaceX’s representative wrote back offering several thousand dollars and agreeing to those terms in cordial legalese; Sawchuk would need to send them an official invoice “for collection and storage of debris pending recovery.” Should provide compensation a company owned by the richest dude in the world probably to folks they drop potentially lethal garbage on? But after learning of the situation via early media coverage, by initiating unilateral contact with Sawchuk, SpaceX had circumvented the formal procedures dictated by prevailing space law. According to the OST and the Space Liability Convention, what should’ve happened is this: after finding the SpaceX’s space junk, Sawchuk somehow should have contacted Global Affairs Canada, which should have contacted the U.S. State Department, which should have contacted SpaceX to arrange retrieval of the company’s property in coordination with the Canadian government. If there had been damage, the U.S. government would have been obligated by the OST to compensate the Canadian government. But because SpaceX is a private company, and no damage occurred, any compensation is voluntary. Canadian Space Agency later released a statement saying that local law enforcement should be notified - implying that small-town RCMP officers are trained in dealing with potentially hazardous space debris. They aren’t. As Sawchuk and his neighbors awaited SpaceX’s trash pickup, even more recoverable debris emerged, but in the form of fragments of an entirely different Crew Dragon trunk that reentered elsewhere on May 21. Pieces were found in North Carolina, including one that allegedly bounced off someone’s house. SpaceX’s plan for the Starlink mega constellation is that each Ford F150-sized satellite will operate for five years before being deorbited to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, clearing the way for the launch of new replacements. SpaceX has provisional permission from the Federal Communications Commission to launch and operate 42,000 Starlink satellites. Assuming each one reaches orbit and lasts five years, on average, SpaceX will be burning up nearly one satellite per hour. If, like the Crew Dragon trunks, some might scatter large pieces across the Earth after failing to fully burn up, the prospect of human fatalities cannot be easily dismissed. Even if all Starlinks fully burn as planned, the repercussions on our planet’s atmosphere and climate from this single mega constellation project could be severe - and Starlink is but the first of many. SpaceX finally notified Sawchuk of the recovery team’s planned arrival on June 11. The stage was set for a space-junk media circus in the middle of rural Saskatchewan. By then the space-junk haul had grown to five very large pieces - the two Sawchuk had originally found, plus one apiece that each of his two sons found on their plots, and finally from a neighbor a frighteningly huge spearlike shard that was about nine feet tall and weighed 80 pounds. There were about 250 pounds of space debris in total, sitting there in the equipment shed. An U-Haul arrived, then two very nervous-looking young men emerged and somewhat sheepishly approached the awaiting throng. The pair stayed mostly silent, avoiding eye contact and offering only tight-lipped smiles in response to the ceaseless barrage of questions as they donned gloves and loaded the debris, piece by piece, into the truck. “How much do these trunks weigh? That information isn’t public, you know!” No answer other than twin forced smiles. “After all, the U.S. government classifies spacecraft parts as munitions.” One of them glanced nervously at the U-Haul but said nothing. Both disappeared into the side room to talk behind closed doors with Sawchuk. After that uneventful private chat, the pair hopped back in the U-Haul and drove off. The assembled media gradually packed up and left too. If had fallen those pieces in the city of Regina, or in New York City, or on a midair passenger jet? To SpaceX’s credit, the company is now working with NASA to study ways to mitigate the problem posed by Crew Dragon trunks. Even so, that more space junk will fall on us in the coming months and years is a matter of mathematical certainty. As of this writing there are 10,057 active satellites in orbit; well more than half of those are SpaceX’s Starlink spacecraft. There are tens of thousands of pieces of space debris large enough to track, and orders of magnitude more that are too small for our current surveillance to see. Most of this material, satellites and debris alike, is in low-Earth orbit, and without intervention will eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere in years, decades or centuries depending on altitude. We’re left hoping that hazardous pieces won’t reach the ground, that all those tons of vaporized aerospace-grade metal won’t further erode our planet’s protective ozone layer, that the sky will not fall. Countries need to enforce the rules that already exist, and regulations need to be updated to account for the unprecedented numbers of launches and reentries now occurring. (Source: scientificamerican *)
* Scientific American, an American popular science monthly magazine.
by Lawler, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada
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