October 2015
Space debris, Kessler Syndrome, and the unreasonable expectation of certainty
...render access to low Earth orbit all but impossible – a process commonly referred to as the ‘Kessler Syndrome’ after the debris scientist Donald Kessler – the reality is not likely to be on the scale of these predictions or the events depicted in the...
March 2016
Space debris conundrum for international law makers
... General Assembly, Annex, International Legal Materials 1967, Vol. 6, 386-390. 2 The term Kessler Syndrome, named after Donald J. Kessler who first alerted to this devastating potential of debris proliferation in 1978, denotes a runaway cascade...
October 2015
Green cosmonautics: an ideal to strive for
... become impossible because the risk of collision with space debris will be too great. This is what the Kessler syndrome, also known as the cascading effect7, warns us about. Every orbit has its own “critical density” for...
March 2015
Congested, contested, and invested: of space debris, risky launches and private initiative
... interfered with its attitude controls so that it was able to successfully transmit data for only seven days. Kessler Syndrome Scientists believe that there is enough human-generated space debris in the critical low-Earth orbit to enable...
February 2018
Are we asking the right questions about space debris?
... create another interesting, potentially cross-contaminating hazard that is now being studied very carefully. References 1 Kessler, D. “Collision Frequency of Artificial Satellites: The Creation of a Debris Belt”, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol...
June 2015
The new space ethics: COSPAR, Planetary Protection and beyond
... discussion on the potential risk to space activity in Earth orbit from a cascade effect of space debris known as the Kessler Syndrome. 4: Claude Lafleur, Costs of US piloted programs , The Space Review, March 8, 2010. Lafleur states that the Shuttle...
