The space just over our heads is becoming so clogged with satellites and satellite debris that it could devolve into a self-perpetuating trash cloud that could threaten future spaceflights and eventually rain down dangerous, fiery fragments onto us here on Earth.
This nightmare scenario is known as Kessler syndrome, a concept by NASA scientist Donald Kessler. One collision creates debris, which causes more collisions. After a while, the Earth becomes a sticky-sweet treat that was rolled in some dirt. We’d be essentially wrapped in a candy-coated shell of shrapnel that would make launching or even operating satellites nearly impossible.
Kessler, theorizing about all this decades ago, thought all of this would unfold gradually, slowly, over time. New research suggests it’s happening rapidly, and it could all be made worse by our own sun.
The not-yet-peer-reviewed research, published in arXiv, suggests that a powerful solar storm could, theoretically, knock out satellite navigation systems, thus cutting out a satellite’s ability to navigate around space trash. It’s a bad enough problem for one satellite; now multiply that by the thousands of satellites already packed into low Earth orbit, with the many, many more going up every week.
It’s estimated that around 15,000 satellites are circling in low Earth orbit right now. That number will only continue to grow, along with the amount of speeding, deadly shrapnel the satellites create. A sudden loss of control could be catastrophic.
Right now, satellites are constantly dodging one another. SpaceX satellites alone performed more than 300,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers last year. Take away guidance systems, and the collisions would start happening fast and quickly pile up. You don’t have to guess how long it would take for the first crash to happen.
The researchers behind the new study introduced something called the “CRASH clock,” a measure of how long it would take for there to be some major crashes in space after a mass loss of control. Researchers say that satellites pass within one kilometer of each other every 36 seconds, which, by their calculations, means that it would take just 5.5 days for the first major collision to trigger a cascading debris event.
We’re one powerful geomagnetic storm away from theoretically knocking out all of our satellites, sending them all crashing into each other, knocking out global communication and navigation, creating a metallic death cloud in low Earth orbit, and raining down hellfire on the planet below. How comforting.
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