Orbital crowding |
Share this Story : The Sarnia Observer Copy Link Email X Reddit Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr
When I was in high school, lying on the grass on a clear, dark night in the 1970s, I stared at the sky for hours hoping to spot a satellite. Catching a rare glimpse of a faint dot moving across the stars was an absolute thrill. It felt like a connection to human ingenuity floating amongst the stars.
Today, that quiet sky has become a bustling highway. The heavens are full of satellites, turning a rare sighting into a constant distraction. This explosion of traffic casts a shadow over science, threatening to render ground-based astronomy entirely useless as countless light streaks routinely photobomb deep space telescope images.
Orbital crowding Back to video
Our orbital neighborhood is crowded, and the hardware circling Earth brings profound risks. About fifteen thousand active satellites are in orbit right now, moving at speeds exceeding seventeen thousand miles per hour. At those velocities, the danger of a catastrophic collision is immense. A crash does not just destroy a piece of equipment; it creates thousands of pieces of high-speed shrapnel. These fragments become unguided projectiles, silently tearing through adjacent orbital........