Comment on Musk’s Starlink hit with hours-long outage after rollout of T-Mobile satellite service
Aedis@lemmy.world 1 day agoIs that accurate though? Assume a satellite is in a decaying orbit (thus too low to contribute to Kessler syndrome on its own) and another satellite is in a different orbit eccentricity-wise but they both collide. Are we certain that none of the pieces from the collision would acquire enough speed to become boloids that contribute to Kessler syndrome?
Time to go down the rabbit hole that is orbital mechanics for me again. Byeeee lol
A year is actually quite a short time (in terms of deorbiting).
As for your previous question yes a collision at starlink orbit could send some shrapnel to higher orbit planes however a majority would be in highly eccentric orbits that would decay quickly on the low end.
The issue would be a starlink collision then hitting something in a higher orbit causing Kessler syndrome in that orbit. The odds of this are still next to zero but never zero.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
For your question, no. There’s no way for an object to have an orbit that doesn’t intersect the same altitude where an impulse happened. They could be knocked into an eccentric orbit, but it at least has to have the lowest point at the highest point of the Starlink network.
This is not to say it can’t hit something else after that changes the perigee at a later point in it’s orbit, thus lifting it higher. For a single collusion though, no, at least with the collision alone.