Editor’s Note: This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.
At any given moment, more than 10,000 satellites are whizzing around the planet at roughly 17,000 miles per hour. This constellation of machinery is the technological backbone of modern life, making GPS, weather forecasts, and live television broadcasts possible.
But space is getting crowded. Ever since the Space Age dawned in the late 1950s, humans have been filling the skies with trash. The accumulation of dead satellites, chunks of old rockets, and other litter numbers in the tens of millions and hurdles along at speeds so fast that even tiny bits can deliver lethal damage to a spacecraft. Dodging this minefield is already a headache for satellite operators, and it’s poised to get a lot worse — and not just because humans are now launching thousands of new crafts each year.
All the excess carbon dioxide generated by people burning fossil fuels is shrinking the upper atmosphere, exacerbating the problem with space junk. New research, published in Nature Sustainability on Monday, found that if emissions don’t fall, as few as 25 million satellites — about half of the current capacity — would be able to safely operate in orbit by the end of the century. That leaves room for just 148,000 in the orbital range that most satellites use, which isn’t as plentiful as it sounds: A report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2022 estimated that as many as 60,000 new satellites will crowd our skies by 2030. According to reports, Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone wants to deploy 42,000 of its Starlink satellites.
