Questions: Technology & Internet

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/tragedy-of-the-commons-in-space-we-need-to-act-now-to-prevent-an-orbital-debris-crisis-scientists-say

Earth orbit is getting more and more crowded, with both active satellites and pieces of debris. There's so much stuff up there that it's far from alarmist to start worrying about the Kessler syndrome, a nightmare scenario in which a collision or two leads to many more, vastly increasing the amount of junk circling our planet.

“We have to get serious about this and recognize that, unless we do something, we are in imminent danger of making a whole part of our Earth environment unusable."

Most of those LEO satellites — about 6,800 of them — belong to a single constellation: SpaceX's Starlink broadband network. The vast majority of these warnings involve Starlink satellites, which are far from sitting ducks. These spacecraft use onboard software to spot possibly worrisome encounters and perform evasive maneuvers if needed which other satellites cannot.

These numbers are growing all the time, and the tally could soon get mind-bogglingly high. SpaceX, for example, wants the Starlink network to eventually harbor more than 40,000 spacecraft.

Other players aim to build their own broadband constellations in LEO as well. China has begun building out its Qianfan ("Thousand Sails") megaconstellation, which will feature about 14,000 satellites if all goes according to plan. In addition, Amazon intends to assemble its own 3,200-satellite LEO broadband network, called Project Kuiper.

These satellites are having more and more close encounters with each other and with pieces of debris. Indeed, there are about 1,000 collision warnings per day on average in LEO. Earth orbit is getting more and more crowded, with both active satellites and pieces of debris. There's so much stuff up there that it's far from alarmist to start worrying about the Kessler syndrome, a nightmare scenario in which a collision or two leads to many more.