Troubled Orbits, Earthly Politics: Shifting Responsibilities of Care for Space Debris

• In Event: Science, Technology and Society in Outer Space - III

Abstract

Space debris - defunct spacecraft, such as satellites, spent rocket bodies and different objects released during spaceflight missions -, not unlike climate change or marine debris, poses the question how we want to live with the material leftovers of technological endeavors past and yet to come. Although techno-societies fundamentally and increasingly rely on functioning space infrastructures, they have failed to establish systems of care and maintenance to cope with the problem of space debris. Only very recently, the awareness of space debris as a severe risk that might put an end to both, space exploration and the ‘planeto-orbital’ infrastructures our life today depends upon, has increased with national and international space policy institutions and public media. One main reason for this is the renewed interest in interplanetary space exploration, including the colonization of Moon and Mars, that is part of transhumanist or commercially driven dreams by both public and increasingly powerful private actors in the currently so-called ‘New Space’ age. Drawing on work in STS on infrastructures and repair (Suchman 1995; Graham/Thrift 2007; Gabrys 2011, 2009; Latour 1999), we explore the politics, materialities, and epistemologies of space debris in this ‘New Space’ age. Understanding space infrastructures as extended Earthly infrastructure, we attend to the ways in which space junk - this once accepted by-product of scientific-technological progress, economic interests and geopolitical structure - increasingly becomes a matter of concern. We propose to think of ‘planeto-orbital’ infrastructures as negotiated, contested and in need of material care not yet provided for them.

Authors

• Michael Clormann, Munich Center for Technology in Society, Technical University of Munich

• Nina Klimburg Witjes, Vienna University