The recent launch of the first 60 “Starlink” satellites has sparked outrage on social media. Some critics claim the “mega-constellation” of satellites by the U.S. company SpaceX will increase the risk of creating more space junk, even calling it a threat to space flight itself. What is your opinion — is this criticism justified or exaggerated?
We’re talking about a constellation that — if it ever comes to full fruition — would include up to 12,000 members. Several nations have launched almost 9,000 satellites over the past six decades. Of these, about 5,000 are still in orbit. So we are talking about doubling the amount of traffic in space over a couple of years, or over a decade at most, compared to the last 60 years.
However, the space debris issue is mostly caused by the fact that we leave objects behind in orbit, which are then a target for collisions either with fragments of a previous collision event or with big, intact objects. Currently, most space debris comes from explosive break-up events; in the future, we predict collisions will be the driver. It’s like a cascade event: Once you have one collision, other satellites are at risk for further collisions.
Over the past two decades, there has been a lot of effort to establish guidelines and codes of conduct. For low-Earth orbit (LEO), there is a well-known guideline to take out your spacecraft, satellite, or launch vehicle upper stage, within 25 years after the end of mission.
To have a reasonable shot at having a stable space environment, the goal is to have at least 90% of the satellites and launch-vehicle upper stages with lifetimes longer than 25 years take themselves out of orbit, or put themselves into orbits with lifetimes less than 25 years.
However, we are not really good at doing this at the moment. We’re talking about success rates of 5% to 15% for satellites (launch vehicle orbital stages do notably better, with success rates of 40-70% in low-Earth orbit). Already with current traffic, we have reasonable concerns that we’re creating a real debris issue out there.
If we’re now thinking about putting another couple of thousands of satellites up there, with levels of compliance similar to what we’ve been doing so far, then we’re talking about a possible catastrophe.
Operators of any type of large satellite constellation would have to behave far better than most current actors in spaceflight have been doing. And this is the concern: Before you launch, operators can of course say and demonstrate that they are going to comply with all international norms and guidelines. But it’s only after launch that we know how responsible their behavior actually was.
