How to manage the heritage values of space junk

'My career as a heritage consultant working with engineers on mining, urban development and construction projects was a huge influence on how I started to think about the heritage values of space junk. It was no good being too theoretical and rarified: my approach had to be practical.

Doing the research to work out if space junk might be culturally significant was almost the easy part. There’s no doubt that many, many satellites, like Vanguard 1, Australis Oscar 5 and Syncom 3, are bursting with significance, and this is without considering the fragments and broken bits.

Artist's impression of the Vanguard 1 satellite, in orbit, with Earth below it.
Credit: unknown 

In the field on Earth, there were many situations where I had to persuade an engineer (who was just trying to do their job) that the route of a power line or some other infrastructure might have to change to avoid a place of significance to the Aboriginal or European community. I had heritage legislation to back me up. There’s no similar system for space.

It was very common for developers to leave the heritage survey until the last minute, because they assumed it was less important than project design. But by the time a road alignment, for example, had been chosen, there was often very little room to manoeuvre if it turned out that significant heritage was lying in its path. Changing the road would be very expensive at late stages in the design. I’ve had countless conversations in my career with developers grumbling at the expense of heritage assessments, as if it were the fault of the heritage. ‘If you’d started this process early,’ I’d say, ‘it wouldn’t be the big cost it is now.’ Planning was the key to spending as little money as possible – which was very persuasive to developers and engineers.

The other key factor was persuading people that culturally significant space junk should not be removed from its natural setting in orbit – which would be very expensive, if necessary at all. I considered the risk of collision to see just how dangerous some of these significant old satellites might be to functioning spacecraft. Spacecraft with fuel and power can move out of the way of a piece of rogue space junk.

There are also hit lists of the most dangerous junk, usually old rocket bodies abandoned in orbit which are likely to explode. It would be very useful to have a heritage list of significant satellites in orbit. If a heritage satellite appears in a conjunction analysis or space junk hit list, then we can think about how to manage it. For the moment, there’s nothing we can do'.

Excerpt from Dr Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future  (UNSW Press, 2019, pp 123-124)