Technically his satellites aren’t junking space up, since they just keep burning up.
Comment on US government issues first-ever space debris penalty to Dish Network
iHUNTcriminals@lemm.ee 11 months ago
But not the moron that launched a car?
DietSalt_BolognaPony@lemmy.world 11 months ago
whileloop@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That’s not the Musk space debris we should be concerned about. The car is orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars, extremely unlikely to be a problem for anyone. A needle in a planet full of haystacks.
Starlink, on the other hand, is several hundreds of satellites orbiting in a shell in low Earth orbit. Close calls happen all the time with these.
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) de-orbit themselves fairly quickly after they run out of fuel keeping them on station. They lose altitude constantly due to air drag (there is a very tiny amount of air on LEO). LEO space junk solves itself.
redcalcium@lemmy.institute 11 months ago
Hundreds? There are over 5000 starlink satellites up there.
vector_zero@lemmy.world 11 months ago
How close are we talking?
whileloop@lemmy.world 11 months ago
space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-ale…
According to this article, Starlink satellites are involved in over 1,600 close encounters (within 1 kilometer or 0.6 miles) each week.
vector_zero@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Hot damn, that is close