THE news that a piece of space junk collided with the robotic arm on the International Space Station, is an alarming reminder that what’s called “low Earth orbit” is becoming a crowded place. More and more stuff is out there, travelling at alarming speeds. The number of tiny satellites being sent up for broadband services is rapidly rising. All of this raises questions and a call for “responsible space behaviour”.

Should we be worried?

Many experts are saying so, among them Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, Andy Lawrence, who recently published Losing The Sky and takes part in a June 15 online event, organised by the Edinburgh Astronomical Society. Lawrence professes a love of astronomy, space exploration and the internet. “Until 2020,” he writes, “I assumed that these three loves do not clash…. It now seems that was just a Moon Age Daydream. A new generation of satellite megaconstellations is on its way, aimed at producing ubiquitous global high-speed internet connection. All very exciting – but these objects pollute the night sky, streak across our astronomical images, blare loudly and unpredictably at our radio telescopes, and increase the danger of spacecraft collisions.”

Read more at: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19347142.space-junk-next-waste-crisis-needs-solved/?ref=twtrec

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Kate Duffy

• SpaceX Starlink satellites have taken over the lower Earth orbit, experts told Insider.
• There are apparently 1,300 Starlink satellites in lower orbit and 300 from other entities.
• “We’re not at the end of the world yet but it’s a serious situation,” another space researcher said.

SpaceX is rapidly deploying its Starlink internet network across the globe with rocket launches happening on a monthly basis.

By rapidly adding to the number of satellites in orbit, space industry experts believe Elon Musk’s space company is heightening the risk of collisions between space objects, generating an abundance of debris.

SpaceX’s Starlink has blasted around 1,300 satellites into orbit and plans for a megaconstellation of up to 42,000 spacecraft in mid-2027.

In October, Starlink launched its Better Than Nothing Beta test across the northern US for $99 a month, plus $499 for the kit. It now operates in more than six countries and has more than 10,000 users worldwide. 

Starlink has previously said its satellites can avoid collisions using an ion drive, which allows it to dodge other objects in orbit. But if the satellites’ communications or operations fail in orbit, they become hazards to space traffic.

In the lower part of the Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Starlink satellites “are completely dominating the space object population,” Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Insider on Tuesday. 

He said there are around 300 other satellites in the lower LEO, including the International Space Station, in comparison to the 1,300 Starlink satellites.

“There’s a point at which they are so many of them manoeuvering all the time that it’s a hazard to traffic” in space, McDowell said, adding that the hazard can result in a massive collision, creating junk.

Each satellite travels at 18,000 miles per hour and all of them are going in different directions, according to McDowell. If they smash into each other, it sends hypersonic shockwaves through the satellites and reduces them into thousands of pieces of shrapnel which then make a shell around the Earth, he said.

This becomes a threat to other space users and an obstruction for astronomers observing the skies.

Read more at: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-satellites-dominate-orbit-industry-experts-2021-3?IR=T

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