Reborn in 2010, the AI ​​in my mind is too powerful.

When humans first explored space, they weren't very careful; much of the exploration was like the blind men touching an elephant.

Inevitably, many problems will be left behind, with space debris being the biggest one.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into Earth orbit, shocking its Cold War adversary, the United States. Spurred by this, the United States passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958 and established NASA, striving with all its might to catch up.

As everyone later learned, the United States did indeed succeed in overtaking the Soviet Union and winning the space race, even accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union through Star Wars.

However, the impact of Sputnik on the United States is far-reaching, and even a proper noun has emerged: the Sputnik moment.

The Sputnik moment refers to a scenario where a country realizes its technological leadership is threatened or challenged and must strive to catch up, usually accompanied by a strong psychological impact and a sense of national crisis.

At that time, scientists all over the world were thinking about how humanity would explore the stars in the future amidst this festivities.

There is no belief that the final stage rocket left in space by Sputnik 1 will pose a major problem in the future.

They certainly knew that the thing floating up there was a mine, but the scientists at the time were confident that perhaps ten years later, humanity would be able to come up with a way to solve this problem.

In 1961, this issue was finally brought up for discussion. The University of London conducted a survey, but found that there were only 200 observable objects on the ground at that time. No organization would want to use its budget to consider future waste problems, so the matter was shelved.

In 1978, American scientist Donald Kessler proposed a new theory: Kessler syndrome.

This refers to the situation where, when the density of space debris in Earth's orbit exceeds a critical value, the debris generated by a collision will trigger a chain reaction, leading to large-scale damage to satellites and the formation of new space debris, threatening the safety of spacecraft.

This theory posits that high-speed orbiting objects can cause severe consequences from even the smallest impacts. If the density of the resulting debris cloud continues to increase, it could render spacecraft unusable in near-Earth orbit for decades.

University College London responded immediately, conducted another round of observations and statistics, and found that the number of observable objects in orbit had reached 5000!

At this stage, the debris is a byproduct of major spacefaring nations, including solid rocket engine residue, coating peeling, thermal protection debris, gloves and tools lost by astronauts, and mission separation release materials, among others.

It's important to know that this is something that can be seen and easily observed.

The only countries capable of resolving, or at least restraining, these issues were the US and the Soviet Union at the time. However, the Cold War had reached its final sprint, and neither country had the time to deal with these matters.

NASA only considered the debris as an environmental system to be taken into account, and studied the frequency of collisions with satellite debris and the formation of debris belts.

Only the European Space Agency has started to compile annual statistics, looking rather pathetic as if hoping that the two big brothers will come and take a look sometime.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1993 the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe jointly established the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, which is the only intergovernmental international organization in the field of space debris.

They developed and promoted space debris management standards, and in 2002 published the "Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines." The most important of these guidelines is to avoid littering. There are hundreds of tools that astronauts have thrown away in space, and these can all be avoided.

Passivation is also required to ensure that all energy is completely removed, batteries are discharged, and fuel is emptied before the satellite is decommissioned.

Finally, there's the matter of post-mortem disposal, which varies depending on the satellite's location within the stratum.

The satellite zone has three main layers.

The first layer is the Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which extends from the Kármán line (100 km) to the 2 km range.

The spacecraft on this level travel at high speeds, taking only about 90 minutes to circle the Earth, and can circle the Earth 15-16 times a day.

With the lowest launch cost and an orbit located between the Earth's atmosphere and the inner Van Allen radiation belts, it does not require complex radiation protection design, which can significantly reduce satellite manufacturing costs.

Of course, there is still a thin atmosphere in this orbit, which will generate continuous atmospheric drag, causing the orbital altitude to decrease slowly. Spacecraft need to periodically start their engines to maintain their orbit, otherwise they will eventually fall into the atmosphere and burn up.

The International Space Station operates in a low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 400 kilometers. This altitude avoids most atmospheric drag, allows astronauts to stay safely, and enables regular refueling by cargo spacecraft to maintain its orbit.

The aurora's starlink network is also on this layer, along with a large number of other meteorological satellites, resource survey satellites, and reconnaissance satellites.

Low Earth orbit is the best testing ground for humans to verify deep space technology, and many key technologies are first tested here.

Therefore, this is also the most active and crowded orbital region for human space activities.

The second layer, the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), ranges from 2000 to 35786 kilometers. This is generally the area for navigation satellites, including GPS, BeiDou, and Galileo.

The time it takes to orbit the Earth is about 12 hours, which allows satellites to be evenly distributed around the globe, ensuring that at least four satellites can be seen simultaneously from any location on Earth at any time, thus meeting the basic conditions for positioning calculation.

Moreover, compared to low Earth orbit, which requires hundreds or thousands of satellites to achieve global coverage, MEO only needs 20-30 satellites to complete the network, significantly reducing construction and operation costs.

Meanwhile, the coverage area of ​​a single satellite is much larger than that of a low Earth orbit satellite, and users can have continuous visibility for several hours at a time without the problem of frequent signal switching and interruption.

The third layer is geostationary orbit (GEO), a dedicated orbit approximately 35786 kilometers above the equator. This is the domain of communication and mainstream weather satellites.

GEO satellites are stationary relative to the ground, and ground antennas can be fixedly pointed at the satellites. Without the need for complex tracking mechanisms, three satellites can cover almost the entire Earth's surface except for the poles, making them ideal for scenarios that require continuous and stable signals, such as broadcasting and fixed communications.

Meteorological satellites can monitor cloud changes in the same area 24 hours a day, and monitor the formation and movement of severe weather such as typhoons and rainstorms in real time.

The final solution agreed upon by all parties was that in this region with the highest density of satellites, extending from the Earth's surface to 2000 kilometers, the satellites must leave after they die and burn up in the atmosphere in a timely manner.

The satellites in the upper two layers will drift to graveyard orbit, which is located 300 kilometers directly above geostationary orbit. The actual operating altitude is about 36000-36300 kilometers. This is the exclusive resettlement area for decommissioned satellites officially designated by the International Space Debris Coordination Committee in 1997.

But even with so many strategies in place, the number of fragments continues to increase.

By 2007, NASA had discovered that the number of debris had reached 14000, which was clearly beyond NASA's ability to handle given its budget had been cut multiple times.

In that same year, the largest known event in human history to produce a single piece of traceable debris occurred: a major Eastern power used a land-based missile to intercept the defunct weather satellite FY-1C, which was at an orbital altitude of approximately 865 kilometers and weighed approximately 750 kilograms.

这次实验，明确了东大有打击卫星的能力，但是也製造了2300余块大于10厘米的碎片、35000余块大于1厘米、100余万块大于1毫米的碎片。

Both the US and Russia have conducted similar experiments, and Russia has also used decommissioned satellites to collide with each other.

The United States went even further, attempting to target its own Explorer 6 satellite with an air-launched ballistic missile in 1959 to test satellite strike technology. The experiment was ultimately successful; had a warhead been installed, the satellite would certainly have been destroyed.

Then in 1962, the United States recklessly detonated a 140-megaton nuclear bomb 400 kilometers above Johnston Atoll, marking the only large-scale nuclear anti-satellite test ever conducted by humankind.

Although the United States claimed it was a high-altitude nuclear test, it directly led to the failure of a large number of satellites. Electrostar 7, which had just completed the first transatlantic television broadcast, was completely shut down seven months later.

They even created an artificial radiation belt, with an intensity 1000 million times higher than that of natural radiation belts. It took a full ten years for the radiation to dissipate.

The United States has consistently opposed various satellite-destroying technologies, partly because they already have enough data.

In short, NASA initially wanted to do something, but their resolve fizzled out after seeing the data. They resorted to their old method: setting up a statistics team, intending to leave the difficulties to future generations.

When 2017 arrived and Aurora began launching Starlink on a large scale, it was surprising to discover that at least 30000 fragments larger than 10 centimeters were searching for someone to stick to them in the sky.

1到10厘米的碎片，更是有将近75万，1毫米到1厘米的超过1.5亿。

Although the Whipple shield, proposed by Harvard astronomy scholar Whipple in 1947, which involved adding a thin, suspended sacrificial plate, was still able to protect spacecraft from most small debris impacts.

But aside from having to stop the mission after each impact, this continuous fragmentation crisis is something Aurora simply cannot accept.

The research on Kessler syndrome has been developing for many years and is now very mature. The Aurora team has calculated that even if nothing is launched in the future, in 200 years, the number of fragments larger than 10 centimeters will triple due to collisions with various types of debris, leading to a tenfold increase in the collision probability. Then, the fragments will become even more numerous and spiral directly into the sky.

Not to mention that stopping launches is impossible. The business of launching satellites is increasing worldwide, and Aurora itself has already launched tens of thousands of satellites.

In just one year, Starlink has already illuminated every corner of the globe.

If someone were to cause a large-scale collision in the sky, it could successfully accelerate the triggering of Kessler Syndrome.

This will cause Aurora to suffer huge losses, and more importantly, it will directly make Aurora's copies no longer secure.

Aurora's ability to act is unmatched by NASA. After realizing that the problem had to be solved, Aurora immediately established a special task force, ready to fight these space debris to the death.

Even Chen Yiran, who hadn't been active on the employee forum for over six months, personally came out of retirement to coordinate the project team.

For a moment, the interior of Aurora seemed poised for a major undertaking.

Chen Yiran did not give this project a high level of secrecy, and even directly issued a declaration of war on Twitter.

We must declare war on space junkyards!

This seems to be a signal that Google is confirming that the aurora borealis doesn't seem to be focusing its attention on the ocean.

Many countries are also starting to worry that the satellites that have been declared obsolete may actually be secretly used for military purposes, and what if they are dismantled as junk?

Mao has even started looking for Soviet-era manuals to see if there's anything he didn't want people to know about the items that were thrown onto the cemetery tracks.