Space Junk (Space Debris) - The amount of trash in Earth orbit, from spent rocket stages, broken satellites and micrometeoroids, is growing. Scientists are working on methods to combat the threat of space junk and orbital debris collisions.
How many satellites in space?
The internet database lists 28,300 active satellites in various Earth orbits at the start of 2024. As of January 2025, there are 6,912 Starlink satellites in orbit, of which 6,874 are working as part of Starlink megaconstellation. By the time 2030 rolls in, more than 100,000 satellites are expected to crowd low Earth orbit.
Five or 10 years from now, we'll have somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 satellites, and I am very skeptical that at the upper number of 100,000 things can be operated safely,
What is a Orbital regime / type of orbit ?
Although the space beyond Earth’s atmosphere is vast, human-made satellites are typically located in one of three popular orbital regimes: low Earth orbit (LEO), medium Earth orbit (MEO), and geosynchronous orbit (GEO) and others.
🦖#23143 In the next decade or earlier, we'll have somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 satellites, and I am extremely skeptical that at the upper number of 50,000 things can be operated safely,
It's going to be like an interstate highway in a rush hour in a snowstorm with everyone driving extremely fast.
Today, 11.3.2023 there are about 2,100 active satellites orbit Earth today, out of about 23,000 orbiting objects that have been cataloged (inactive satellites, rocket stages, space debris, among others).