There have never been so many satellites orbiting Earth as there are today, thanks in part to the launch of mega constellations like SpaceX's Starlink internet service - and now we are learning just how the sun's activity can affect them
They’re in way too low an orbit to pose a Kessler threat since any debris would fall back down on a scale of a few months to under a decade. The danger comes from stuff that’s at decade-to-century lifetimes.
Starlink sucks for a bunch of other reasons like the huge rocket emissions to put a bunch of astronomy-polluting garbage in space that’s designed to fail.
They also have massively increased the level of aluminum oxide in the atmosphere from all the satellites burning up (something like a 30% increase over baseline), which might damage the ozone layer.
Apparently half of all active satellites are Starlink and they plan to increase the current number by ~8x.
They’re in way too low an orbit to pose a Kessler threat since any debris would fall back down on a scale of a few months to under a decade. The danger comes from stuff that’s at decade-to-century lifetimes.
Starlink sucks for a bunch of other reasons like the huge rocket emissions to put a bunch of astronomy-polluting garbage in space that’s designed to fail.
They also have massively increased the level of aluminum oxide in the atmosphere from all the satellites burning up (something like a 30% increase over baseline), which might damage the ozone layer.
Apparently half of all active satellites are Starlink and they plan to increase the current number by ~8x.
holy shit, I knew it was bad but not that bad