Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here's why that may be a problem:
SpaceX's rapidly growing fleet of Starlink internet satellites now make up half of all active satellites in Earth orbit.
On February 27, the aerospace company launched 21 new satellites to join its broadband internet Starlink fleet. That brought the total number of active Starlink satellites to 3,660, or about 50 percent of the nearly 7,300 active satellites in orbit, according to analysis by astronomer Jonathan McDowell using data from SpaceX and the U.S. Space Force.
"These big low-orbit internet constellations have come from nowhere in 2019, to dominating the space environment in 2023," says McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "It really is a massive shift and a massive industrialization of low orbit."
SpaceX has been launching Starlink satellites since 2019 with the goal of bringing broadband internet to remote parts of the globe. And for just as long, astronomers have been warning that the bright satellites could mess up their view of the cosmos by leaving streaks on telescope images as they glide past.
Even the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits more than 500 kilometers above the Earth's surface, is vulnerable to these satellite streaks, as well as those from other satellite constellations. From 2002 to 2021, the percentage of Hubble images affected by light from low-orbit satellites increased by about 50 percent, astronomer Sandor Kruk of the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and colleagues report March 2 in Nature Astronomy.
The number of images partially blocked by satellites is still small, the team found, rising from nearly 3 percent of images taken between 2002 and 2005 to just over 4 percent between 2018 and 2021 for one of Hubble's cameras. But there are already thousands more Starlink satellites now than there were in 2021.
"The fraction of [Hubble] images crossed by satellites is currently small with a negligible impact on science," Kruk and colleagues write. "However, the number of satellites and space debris will only increase in the future." The team predicts that by the 2030s, the probability of a satellite crossing Hubble's field of view any time it takes an image will be between 20 and 50 percent.
The sudden jump in Starlink satellites also poses a problem for space traffic, says astronomer Samantha Lawler of the University of Regina in Canada. Starlink satellites all orbit at a similar distance from Earth, just above 500 kilometers.
"Starlink is the densest patch of space that has ever existed," Lawler says. The satellites are constantly navigating out of each other's way to avoid collisions (SN: 2/12/09). And it's a popular orbital altitude — Hubble is there, and so is the International Space Station and the Chinese space station.
(Score: 1) by XivLacuna on Sunday March 05, @08:50PM (4 children)
We could use high altitude balloons instead of satellites for the most part. All we have to do is keep the Air Force from shooting them down after a media frenzy.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday March 05, @09:14PM (1 child)
They won't shoot it down if you let them know you're flying it.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 06, @01:05PM
My impression is that the Chinese balloons were abusive on several angles: refused to notify other countries about flight plans, refused to provide assurances that they wouldn't become a hazard for air traffic, and very low radar reflectivity - so air traffic controllers can't see them and route traffic around them, when they go below 50k feet. And given that they're probably surveillance/spy platforms intended to do what they're doing, it's a pretty dick move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @12:33AM
You mean like this [arstechnica.com]?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @10:11AM
And as long as something else is used instead of helium: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/helium-shortage-doctors-are-worried-running-element-threaten-mris-rcna52978 [nbcnews.com]
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 06, @02:25AM (3 children)
Someone has to drag you luddites into the future. The future is in space, out of our gravity well.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @03:16AM (2 children)
The future is thousands and thousands of satellites bringing us ads and sucking up our private data and something-something Mars and human destiny (or some other line of crap like that).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @04:32AM
Just acshept it. You're just a data point after all.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 06, @11:05AM
They tell us that advertising brings your internet. Get used to it!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.