‘This feels fragile’: how a satellite-smashing chain reaction could spiral out of control | Today, the space around Earth can no longer be considered empty. More than 30,000 objects are in orbit, and that figure is rising exponentially
by InsaneSnow45
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>For hundreds of thousands of years, Earth’s orbit has been a vast and empty space – free from the impact of busy humans below, scurrying around on the surface of the planet.
>But in 1957, Soviet Union scientists achieved a historic breakthrough, sending a metal ball with four radio antennae – called Sputnik – so high and speeding so fast that it would reach such a velocity that it would spin in orbit around Earth.
>This marked the first steps of the space age, with a handful of objects orbiting the planet by the end of the 1950s.
>As the space race between the United States and the Soviets gathered pace, each sent more and more satellites into space. By the end of the 1970s, over 14,000 tracked objects had been launched – with around 7,000 still in orbit, visualised above this globe.
>By the end of the 1990s, even more satellites had been launched. Over these decades, other countries joined, and Earth’s back yard became increasingly crowded. Around 20,000 objects were being tracked in orbit at the turn of the millennium.
>In the 21st century, private companies began to launch satellites at unprecedented rates. Today, Earth’s orbit is packed with thousands of satellites and fragments – around 32,000 in total – all circling the planet at immense speed. This is even after accounting for the fact that a lot of satellites have fallen out of orbit and been destroyed.
>Some reports suggest that by the end of this decade there could more than 60,000 active satellites in space. Launch by launch, what began with a handful of scientific and military spacecraft has accelerated into a constant flow of objects, publicly and privately owned, placed into different orbital lanes, each serving a variety of purposes.
>There is now a diverse collection of satellites spinning around the globe, including communication and weather satellites, navigation satellites and Earth observation technology that takes images of the surface.
While I agree it’s a problem with how crowded it’s getting out there, I always laugh at the comically densely populated depictions of said satellites in the pictures in such articles.
Edit: For example, each satellite, or yellow dot in this article, is NOT the size of a large city on the planet, as they make it seem. Just one example of the artificial overcrowding they try to portray
Most of them are in LEO right, so if a cascade starts in LEO wouldn’t they pretty fast burn up?
A low satellite orbits at 200 km, and geostationary orbit is at 35,786 km. This creates a spherical shell that all satellites must fit in. And it’s really getting crowded out there. There’s only 300 trillion cubic kilometers of space available.
I just want to point out that SpaceX has an excellent record of space debris mitigation, in both planning and execution. The worst offenders are Russia (and the Soviet Union) and China. Due to the orbital altitude, Starlink is unable to cause a chain reaction that would impact LEO for any significant amount of time.