\u201cThis is all happening really fast,\u201d said Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability for Secure World Foundation, in an interview.<\/p>\n
Crowded orbits<\/p>\n
Samson said that, at present, satellites have a fairly large \u201cbubble\u201d of space around them when it comes to collision detection. This is because of uncertainties in the precise location and movement of vehicles. If you improve space situational awareness, such as what SpaceX seeks to do with Stargaze, those bubbles could be shrunk to reduce the number of potential collision warnings. But that will come with risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of room in space, of course,\u201d Samson said. \u201cBut the question is, how much risk do you want to take?\u201d<\/p>\n
A technical expert at The Aerospace Corporation, Marlon Sorge, told Ars that many unanswered questions about SpaceX\u2019s proposed megaconstellation for orbital data centers make it difficult to assess the risks of collision. This includes their size (they will require very large solar arrays to collect sunlight) and precisely where the satellites will be deployed. There is already a lot of debris at around 800 to 1,000 km above Earth from previous collisions, including from an infamous Chinese anti-satellite missile test in 2007, which created more than 3,000 pieces of golf-ball-sized or larger debris.<\/p>\n
Above that altitude, there is less debris, Sorge said. But objects at that altitude take centuries to deorbit naturally, due to the very limited atmosphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big challenge at those altitudes is the stuff that\u2019s up there stays up there,\u201d Sorge said. \u201cIf you generate more debris, if you have problems, it won\u2019t go away, so you\u2019re stuck with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
SpaceX sought to address these concerns in its regulatory filing, noting that each satellite would have \u201credundant maneuverability capabilities\u201d in order to deorbit into Earth\u2019s atmosphere. The filing also appears to recognize emerging science<\/a> that indicates that aluminum burning up from reentering satellites is harmful to ozone levels. To address this, SpaceX is considering moving aging satellites into \u201chigh altitude Earth orbits or heliocentric orbits.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis is all happening really fast,\u201d said Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability for Secure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-264680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}