When on Jan. 11 China deliberatly shot a missile to bust one of its own, defunct satellites to smithereens, a few accounts mentioned the practical hazards of the smithereens. But news on that aspect faded amid worry over military security and diplomatic reaction. The Tracker wondered about the debris–isn’t that a huge problem? There was not much immediate followup. The NY Times’s William J. Broad clearly wondered at it, too. He has a tough, eye-opening reminder of pending catastrophe as the ScienceTimes section’s lead piece. The lede carries to good effect a pulp-novel phrase, a warning that approaching ever closer is an inevitable “slow cascade of collisions…spreading chaos through the heavens.”

The extra Chinese debris accelerates the process appreciably. The result could kill astronauts and render much of low earth orbit unusable. If other space nations had themselves not been so derelict over the years at doing something about the problem, one thinks, the  recklessness of China’s casual display of exo-atmospheric destruction derby should alone be enough to generate furious international response.

Only a few other media outlets have followed the space debris angle. ABC News’s (US, not Australia) Ned Potter had a good account Feb. 1. At Space.com, Leonard David similarly wrote it up, Feb. 2.

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