SpaceX promises to limit nuisance from Starlink satellites for astronomy – IT Pro – News

Then again, the ISS has also been in space for 24 years, so it seems we have that problem, right now. well mastered anyway.

They have to swerve regularly. And in those 24 years, more and more space debris has been added, so the risks are slowly increasing. If that goes wrong a (few) times between a satellite and a piece of space debris, a lot of space debris is immediately added, which also increases the chance of another collision of another satellite, resulting in even more debris. , etc. This can get out of hand very quickly, producing so much debris that most of the satellites go out of order, all turn to space debris, and it becomes impossible to fly satellites in certain orbits without getting them in contact with that debris. collide. That’s what it’s called kesslersyndroom.

The problem with all those internet satellites from SpaceX, Amazon, etc, is that they are very many satellites, so that the chance of collisions also increases a lot, and the chance of a chain reaction also increases. I think many (but not all!) of those satellites are in a relatively low orbit, so that in the event of a catastrophe they fall back again within a relatively short time (< 10 years), and then those orbits are probably reasonably usable again. Not that that's not a bad thing: 10 years is still quite a long time. All this in contrast to the higher orbits: once they are really polluted, it takes centuries or millennia for the debris to fall back to Earth and become usable again.