Comment by m3kw9
13 days ago
I would think newer sats will have collision avoidance capabilities and older ones will just crash. Maybe even clean up sats will be developed to collection them
13 days ago
I would think newer sats will have collision avoidance capabilities and older ones will just crash. Maybe even clean up sats will be developed to collection them
Leo starts at 7.8 kilometers per second and speed plus secondary and subsequent collisions with very small debris makes it impractical. Also carrying fuel to react frequently would dramatically change the entire mission.
If your non refuelable sat is good for 6 months it probably no longer makes sense to launch it.
Satellites fail (lost control, or spontaneously explode). Very small debris is everywhere and under 5-10 cm largely untracked, but some are working to fix this gap.
There is no incentive large enough for cleanup (it's expensive, nobody can/wants to pay, and there are a lot of objects)
With currently deployed tech, most of the smaller orbital debris is not (usefully) track-able.
At orbital velocities, you gotta know it's coming to be able to avoid it.
And a orbital velocities, the untrack-able stuff can still kill a satellite.