The increase in the number of space equipment flying in and around the Moon is causing increased alarm among experts. Even a single incident of fragmentation could have catastrophic and far-reaching consequences for future lunar exploration; This requires the creation of appropriate tools to determine the characteristics of the debris.

This is the opinion of two Purdue University researchers who warn that there is a lack of awareness of the cosmic sphere at a time when circular activity is increasing. The orbital debris currently orbiting the Earth is mostly caused by collisions, exploding fuel tanks, exploding batteries, and the breakdown of obsolete or damaged spacecraft, among other causes.

Research shows that lunar fragmentation events can carry fragments far beyond their original orbits, even to Earth. They concluded that it is necessary to better evaluate the behavior of possible circular waste.

The presence of space debris in the prelunar void (the region between the Earth and the Moon) or in orbit around the Moon can be a cause for concern. In the case of debris in orbit around the Moon, there is no natural clearing mechanism similar to what the Earth’s atmosphere does for debris in orbit. The pieces orbiting the airless Moon remain there due to the Moon’s gravity.

chaotic nature

Arlie Black and Carolyn Frew of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, raise the caution flag on circular waste. Black is a graduate student in the Space Information Dynamics Group at Purdue University’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In their study, recently published in the Space Research Committee’s journal Advances in Space Research, the team identified a number of problems.

They state that multinational studies on the moon and satellite are currently ongoing. However, there is a lack of information and modeling regarding the destruction of spacecraft in the lunar environment. For example, a number of Chinese lunar orbiters, landers and rovers, the first moon landing attempt by Israel’s Beresheet, India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission to the moon’s south pole, and the now extended NASA’s CAPSTONE mission. mission mode in Earth-Moon L2 orbits (NRHO) with a nearly linear halo.

In addition, NASA’s Commercial Lunar Flight Service contracts with private American firms to land the space agency’s scientific and technical payload on the lunar surface.

NASA’s Project Artemis also envisions the creation of a small, crewed, multi-purpose Gateway outpost to be housed at NRHO to support lunar surface missions, lunar orbital science missions, and the return of human crews to the Moon for an eventual lunar reset.

Black and Frew explain that point solutions for individual spacecraft breaking up in specific lunar orbits can and have been simulated in the past. However, the paper notes that additional work is needed to comprehensively predict disturbance behavior on a global scale, “without requiring new simulations for every possible permutation that are both computationally expensive and rely on precise parameter knowledge.”

It is necessary to take into account the movement of the spacecraft in the Earth-Moon system. There are also associated forces, such as the pressure of solar radiation and the gravitational effects of Jupiter and the Sun.

“Given the chaotic nature of the system dynamics in this region, neighboring orbits and events may exhibit completely different behavior,” the university researchers explain in their journal article, adding that many scenarios for debris formation have yet to be explored.

complex dynamics

“Awareness of the situation in near-Earth space continues to evolve, and even after decades of space activities, we still have not solved the problem of debris in the simple two-body system,” Black told SpaceNews.

The complex dynamics of a three-body system applied to a space object near the Moon, for example, pose a much greater challenge, Black says.

“Given the renewed interest in lunar exploration, the lunar population is expected to increase significantly over the next few years,” Black said. “And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from analyzing near-Earth fragments, it’s that we can’t wait until a critical mass is reached to solve problems with debris.”

Black added that the research aims to take a proactive approach to analyzing circular debris “before a catastrophic fragmentation event occurs” to understand the effects of such an event on different parts of the Moon and highlight potential areas that could be mitigated.

Not if but when

Disintegration of man-made objects in the lunar region is harmful because debris could fly back and fall on the moon or into Earth and near-Earth space, potentially interacting with satellites there, Frew told SpaceNews.

“Some fragments will continue to move and pass in the region between the Earth and the Moon, posing a danger to active space missions in this region,” Fruet said. Even debris that leaves the Earth-Moon system toward the Sun can return decades later, he said.

As a matter of fact, such a scenario seems to have happened with Snoopy, who was dropped by the lunar module of the Apollo 10 mission in May 1969 and rose to the Earth’s surface. It was shot down and placed in orbit around the Sun, and amateur astronomers later noticed an object passing the Earth, which they almost certainly claimed was Snoopy. Frew and his colleagues also examined the returned object in 2015 and said it “matched the Snoopy hypothesis pretty well.”

“With the increasing amount of space coverage in the region, the question is not if but when we will see fragments of human-made objects in lunar space,” Frue said. he emphasized. “We hope to carry this time into the future by doing our best to raise awareness of the space situation.”