The space industry has seen a dramatic uptick in the number of satellites launched into low-Earth orbit in recent years. Much of this growth, but not all of it, has been driven by the rapid expansion of SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation, which is now populated by more than 4,000 satellites.
In our space panel for Ars Frontiers, I had the pleasure of discussing the implications of this growth in satellites and space-based services with a distinguished panel of experts. Many issues, good and bad, have arisen, from the cluttering of low-Earth orbit to the development of powerful tools used in conflict, such as synthetic aperture radar and communications in Ukraine. You can watch the entire discussion here.
It’s important to realize how much the environment in low-Earth orbit has changed over the last five years. This is the area of space from about 100 km in the atmosphere up to about 2,000 km. But the majority of satellites are clustered within a few hundred kilometers of the surface of the Earth.
Charity Weeden is the vice president of global space policy and government relations for Astroscale, a company working to develop technologies to remove debris from low-Earth orbit.
“Everything has changed in orbit,” Weeden explained. “The number of countries in orbit is probably upward of 100 today. So that has really helped the entire global community embrace and utilize space for the benefit of all society. That’s a good thing. Space is threaded into our everyday life in our education products, in transportation, communication, as you mentioned, safety, security, economy.”
For the satellite discussion, please skip to 1:18:55 if the link doesn’t take you there directly.
That means we’re all in this together, she said, and accordingly, we need to work together. “Over the last six decades, we’ve been using space as our own personal operating dumping ground. You know, you launch things, things will break up, pieces will remain in orbit, upper-stage rocket bodies will remain in orbit, and they can slowly drift down into the atmosphere as well and burn up on reentry. That’s all well and good. But it’s the pace of things in the last five to 10 years that has really shown us that the rules that we set up about three decades ago don’t apply [and] are not fit for purpose today.”