2 people are killed annually by almost every thing.
I hate the media...at least the modern media... the article started with "By 2035, debris from low-earth orbit (LEO) objects, like Starlink satellites, could fall and injure or kill someone, the FAA said in report to Congress." (I placed the emphasis)
It sounds like a combination of CYA and targeted fear mongering at the same time.
What I did find interesting, and something I haven't paid attention to in the past, is found later in the article. " In 2019, 0.5 percent of twilight images were affected, and now almost 20 percent are affected," Dr. Przemek Mróz said..." (again, the emphasis is mine).
That is a marked increase in effect in a short time. Given the fact Starlink is the most notable and numerous having been launched in the last few years, one might assume that is what has caused the increase. However, in the next statement Mroz says; "We don't expect Starlink satellites to affect non-twilight images, but if the satellite constellation of other companies goes into higher orbits, this could cause problems for non-twilight observations..."
I agree also. But still, it is not good to piss off the FAA.
It's not a complaint. Just something I wasn't aware of. It's definitely something that should be considered. The thought is SpaceX will put 38K more satellites in orbit in the coming years along with the ~4K that are there now. That will double the number of tracked items (~20K). However, the Europeans (space agency) estimate the the number to be over 125M that aren't tracked...but who knows, they may be counting by the metric system...
Of course they are counting debris as small as 1 millimeter...
Poor Georgia "George" Lass...she never knew what hit her. Ellen Muth was awesome in that series.
Agreed. As far as satellites go, Starlinks aren't terribly large... about 250 kg and a few square meters. Chances of re-entry survival are slim to none. They're definitely not a Skylab...
Yes, exactly. We perform the calculations ourselves (at JPL) to see what the probability of things larger than certain sizes might survive. NASA pays someone like Aerospace to both do the calculations themselves and to check ours. We then sit down and go through all the differences and work them out. This usually results in changes to S/C design where we change materials or take something large and break it into bolted together smaller things so that it comes apart earlier in the de-orbit process and then the smaller pieces break up. This is totally normal and the fact that SpaceX is making a big deal of it is just them…nobody gets it right the first time, we usually take 3-4 iterations over a couple of years because the detailed inputs to the calculations change over time…things like the S/C design, the performance of the solar cycle, our orbital parameters, etc…
I hope we're all counting in the metric system. In 10's not 12's or bakers 13's....It's not a complaint. Just something I wasn't aware of. It's definitely something that should be considered. The thought is SpaceX will put 38K more satellites in orbit in the coming years along with the ~4K that are there now. That will double the number of tracked items (~20K). However, the Europeans (space agency) estimate the the number to be over 125M that aren't tracked...but who knows, they may be counting by the metric system...
Measure in whatever you want. But count in metric..... Unless there is a SPECIFIC requirement to use another base.
111010110111100110100010101.In 10's not 12's or bakers 13's....
