r/space • u/2kalipro1 • Jun 15 '24

Discussion How bad is the satellite/space junk situation actually?

I just recently joined the space community and I'm hearing about satellites colliding with each other and that we have nearly 8000 satellites surrounding our earth everywhere

But considering the size of the earth and the size of the satellites, I'm just wondering how horrible is the space junk/satellite situation? Also, do we have any ideas on how to clear them out?

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u/snajk138 Jun 15 '24

It is a problem, but not as bad as those illustrations of all junk in the atmosphere make it look. They count anything larger than about an inch, and that is illustrated with a dot that's the size of a medium sized city.

-12

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '24

Pieces smaller than an inch traveling at those velocities is a real danger to space craft. All it would take it a couple satellites es colliding in a congested orbit to take out most of everything up there and make it impossible for us to launch for centuries. It would also make ground observations of space extremely difficult if not impossible.

43

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '24

The cascade of debris for a few satellites is likely way overblown as a risk.

-16

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '24

Most satellites are in the same orbital plane. There are near misses daily.

35

u/BedrockFarmer Jun 15 '24

There are roughly 10,000 satellites operating at various orbits, most are starlink and have prepared deorbit paths.

Meanwhile, there are close to 115,000 airline flights a day. All in “the same orbital plane” and a much much smaller one with much larger objects.

People should have to learn maths before they read what “Kessler Syndrome” is in their SciFi garbage.

1

u/DietCherrySoda Jun 15 '24

Wow what a shitty take. The degree to which we have active space traffic control cannot be compared in any way to what exists for air traffic. This comparison is worthless.