This New York Times story quotes David Kessler who, as the story notes, is a private consultant living here in Asheville:
China, experts note, has 39 satellites of its own — many of them now facing a heightened risk of destruction.
Politically, the situation is delicate. In recent years China has played a growing international role in fighting the proliferation of space junk. In 2002, for instance, it joined with other spacefaring nations to suggest voluntary guidelines for debris control.
In April, Beijing is to play host to the annual meeting of the advocacy group, known as the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee. Donald J. Kessler, a former head of the orbital debris program at NASA and a pioneer analyst of the space threat, said Chinese officials at the forum would probably feel “some embarrassment.”
Mr. Kessler said Western analysts agreed that China’s new satellite fragments would speed the chain reaction’s onset. “If the Chinese didn’t do the test, it would still happen,” he said. “It just wouldn’t happen as quickly.”
Last week in Beijing, a foreign ministry spokeswoman failed to respond directly to a debris question. Asked if the satellite’s remains would threaten other spacecraft, she asserted that China’s policy was to keep space free of weapons.
“We are ready to strengthen international cooperation in this regard,” the spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, told reporters.
Cascade warnings began as early as 1978. Mr. Kessler and his NASA colleague, Burton G. Cour-Palais, wrote in The Journal of Geophysical Research that speeding junk that formed more junk would produce “an exponential increase in the number of objects with time, creating a belt of debris around the Earth.”
During the cold war, Moscow and Washington generally ignored the danger and, from 1968 to 1986, conducted more than 20 tests of antisatellite arms that created clouds of jagged scraps. Often, they did so at low altitudes from which the resulting debris soon plunged earthward. Still, the number of objects grew as more nations launched rockets and satellites into orbit.