On March 12, 2013, the Federation Council hosted a round table on the development of measures to ensure planetary security from space risks and threats. The head of Roscosmos Vladimir Popovkin made a report to the senators. Following the results of the round table, Viktor Ozerov, the head of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, sent a proposal to the government to create a center for warning and countering threats related to asteroid hazards in the country. After the fall of the Chelyabinsk bolide on February 15 of this year, everyone poses a danger that comes from space, while no one has any idea how to resist this threat. Only one thing is clear - this requires money.
Vladimir Popovkin on the space threat
According to Popovkin, his department, together with the Russian Academy of Sciences, will work to create a single center for countering and preventing threats from space. Among such threats, he put asteroids and comets in the first place. It is characteristic that the third, but clearly not the last member of this group will be the RF Ministry of Defense. This center will be geographically distributed over the facilities of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Roskosmos, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The working group for the creation of this center has already been created. Vladimir Popovkin told the senators that at the first stage, the main tasks of the center will be to increase the efficiency of observation of small celestial objects and space debris, as well as launch research missions to potentially dangerous asteroids and comets, and develop and test means of impact on space objects.
Curiously, at the same time, Vladimir Popovkin immediately noted that the creation of technologies for countering asteroids and active removal of space debris could serve as a very convenient cover for the creation and testing of military technologies. Therefore, he believes that it is necessary to create international documents that would exclude any possibility of creating, testing and deploying weapons systems in space. Accordingly, it is planned to involve the Russian Foreign Ministry in the work. This position was immediately supported by the head of the EMERCOM of Russia Vladimir Puchkov, who said that together with foreign colleagues it is necessary to work out the issue of creating an international early warning system for space threats deployed on satellites equipped with powerful telescopes.
According to Vladimir Popovkin, the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) should be responsible for observing comets and asteroids, Roskosmos - for combating space debris and solving this problem. He also presented to the senators the projects of anti-asteroid spacecraft of the State Rocket Center. Makeev and NPO them. Lavochkin. The participation of the Russian Ministry of Defense in this program was not disclosed at the meeting. This concealment of the role of the military leaves room for imagination. Most likely, we are talking about the creation and deployment of, if not militaristic programs, then programs of dual use. At the same time, the presence of an international system for the exchange of information on asteroids approaching our planet using orbital telescopes does not in the least interfere with the development of the military component of the space program.
According to the head of the department of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lidia Rykhlova, to create a modern system for observing the asteroid hazard on earth, Russia will need about 58 billion rubles in the next 10 years. But, according to Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the defense industry and space, it is completely ineffective to create this kind of surveillance and protection system on the ground. And it is also very expensive for our country to rely in such work only on its own financial resources.
According to experts, today there are simply no reliable technologies in the world that would make it possible to predict with 100% probability the fall of large asteroids to the Earth - large enough objects that can lead to real destruction. Thanks to the American WISE infrared telescope, which exists at the moment, scientists have become aware of all potentially dangerous meteorites with diameters of about 1 kilometer, but the smaller the meteorite, the lower the probability of its detection, and most importantly, the later it will be noticed.
The diameter of the meteorite that fell near Chelyabinsk was about 17 meters, and its fall for all scientists was a complete surprise. NASA experts, having analyzed the trajectory of the fall of this celestial body, determined that in the most favorable scenario, it could be detected only 2 hours before the fall. In the best case, during this time it would be possible to warn citizens about the danger, although, as the flood in Krymsk showed, even this can not always be hoped for here. In any case, even if people find out about the approach of a large meteorite to the Earth, say, 5 hours before its fall, then during this time it will be possible, at best, only to write a will.
Ivan Moiseev, scientific director of the Institute of Space Policy, is also quite skeptical. According to him, the trajectories of all large asteroids today have long been known and studied by scientists. If we talk about small cosmic bodies, then today there are no technical means for their detection and destruction, which could be called effective. The real task of this entire program can only be scientific - to launch telescopes into orbit and gradually, step by step, create a network for observing small celestial bodies. This is how some countries act today, but not Russia. According to him, a fairly good meteorite control program is currently developing in the United States, and it would be nice for Russia to cooperate with the Americans in the exchange of information. We can hardly do more so far. Therefore, the discussion of the problem in the Federation Council reflects only the vanity that officials should demonstrate. After all, they had to react to the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
According to Moiseev, everything will end with the creation of a new structure, which will be allocated some kind of funding, but not very large. According to him, back in Soviet times, they asked the current chief of the General Staff to allocate funds to combat the meteorite threat, to which the latter replied that the likelihood of a thermonuclear war on Earth is much higher than the threat of a meteorite fall, but you are asking me for funds for the destruction of asteroids is more than I spend on a thermonuclear program. No money was allocated for the project at all. According to Ivan Moiseev, exactly the same will happen now. First, the budget will be calculated, then the probability of an asteroid fall will be estimated, and the estimate will be properly reduced.
Vladimir Popovkin on the threat of space debris
The head of Roscosmos also spoke about the danger of space debris, which poses a real threat to satellites located in the Earth's geostationary orbit. According to Vladimir Popovkin, if in the near future the international community does not take urgent action to protect spacecraft, then in the next 20 years the geostationary will be littered to such an extent that it will be impossible to use it for its intended purpose.
According to him, the unique resource of the Earth's geostationary orbit, where the vast majority of spacecraft are currently deployed, including the main communication satellites and satellites of the missile attack warning system, may be completely lost. The contamination of the geostationary orbit by space debris is so great that even if launches from the Earth are completely stopped, the aging process and decommissioning and destruction of spacecraft will continue in the geostationary orbit. For this reason, it is simply necessary to create an international community that would deal with this problem, since the geostationary orbit is of strategic importance for earthlings.
Previously, information has already appeared that at present there are more than 600 thousand objects of space debris in near-earth orbit, the diameter of which exceeds 1 cm. Collision with such space objects is fraught with serious damage to satellites, there are already about 16 thousand, the complete destruction of the apparatus. Today, satellites have to regularly "move away" from collisions with debris dangerous for their operation. And this, in turn, leads to a consumption of fuel reserves and a reduction in the service life of satellites. Currently, the losses of European satellite operators due to space debris are estimated at 140 million euros annually. Moreover, already in the next decade, this figure may grow to 210 million euros per year.
