Startup Reveals "Space Armor" to Protect Astronauts From Elon Musk's Orbital Trash

"Never content to pollute only the Earth's surface, oceans, and atmosphere, billionaire tech moguls like Elon Musk are increasingly flooding our planet's orbit with debris from their for-profit space ventures. SpaceX, for example, already has some 8,600 active Starlink satellites doing laps around the planet, a number that needs constant reinforcements as craft either tumble back down to Earth or join the 25,000 bits of identifiable junk already floating in orbit."

"Though there are 25,000 tracked pieces of garbage floating through our skies, researchers estimate there may be as many as 170 million bits of smaller debris too small to track, but with the same capacity to wipe out critical infrastructure. Inthat increasingly crowded field, mid-space collisions are becoming more and more likely; as of late 2024, Business Insider reported that space-traffic controllers were issuing 1,000 collision warnings per day."

"It's called "space armor," a material made using a composite-to-resin method by the American aerospace manufacturing company, Atomic-6. In a factsheet, Atomic-6 describes space armor is described as a series of lightweight tiles which protect craft and astronauts against "all untrackable debris" under 3mm in size, and 90 percent of the debris currently in low earth orbit."

Billionaire-led commercial space ventures have greatly increased orbital congestion and debris. SpaceX operates thousands of Starlink satellites, regularly launching dozens more and replenishing craft as others decay or join tracked junk. There are about 25,000 tracked pieces of orbital garbage and an estimated 170 million smaller, untrackable fragments capable of disabling critical infrastructure. Space-traffic controllers issued roughly 1,000 collision warnings per day by late 2024. Atomic-6 developed a composite-to-resin "space armor" composed of lightweight tiles designed to shield spacecraft and astronauts from untrackable debris under 3mm and about 90 percent of debris in low Earth orbit.

Read at Futurism