bbn/AP/Space is in danger of being jammed with Elon Musk and China’s satellites.
The future of outer space is threatened with bottlenecks because of the satellite network owned by Elon Musk’s company and also China.
Starlink, the satellite network owned by Elon Musk, will populate space. Nearly 30 thousand satellites are planned to be launched by Starlink into orbit.
Starlink’s ambition is indeed far above other companies. For example, China Satellite Network is in second place, which is adding to the complexity of space by planning to launch 13,000 satellites.
China Satellite Network is known to want to beat Starlink’s domination in Earth orbit. A recent Business Insider report stated that the preparation of thousands of satellites was carried out by professor Xu Can of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Space Engineering University.
At least it is projected that there will be 60 thousand satellites packed into outer space in the next few years. This number has increased significantly from the existing satellites.
There are at least 10,753 man-made objects currently in orbit. So there will be more than five times the number in the future.
Apart from the China and Starlink projects, there are several companies that also have plans to launch satellites into orbit. Namely Kuiper which is part of Amazon, OneWeb, Telesat, to Rivada Space Networks.
The following is the distribution of the number of satellites planned to be launched into space, quoted by CNBC Indonesia from various sources, Thursday (30/3/2023):
Starlink : 29.988 satelit
China Satellite Network : 12.992 satelit
Amazon Project Kuiper : 7.774 satelit
OneWeb : 6,372 satellites
Telesat Lightspeed 1.671 satelit
Rivada Space Networks : 600 satelit
(source: cnbcindonesia.com)
