Satellites and space junk.

Let me start off by saying how I came upon this subject. I was watching Wall_E with my son. And there is one scene where Walle and the ship he was holding on too was leaving Earth's orbit, and there was litereally a cover of satellites and manmade objects surrounding the Earth. This was based in the future, so they had so many sattellites it was like a haze around the planet.

So this led me to wonder how many satellites do we have an orbit now? I came across this website:

How Many Satellites are orbiting the Earth?

And apparently there are 560 operating now. Which is more then I thought. But there are 8,000 man made objects in total.

Just what are the other thousands of man made objects?

And will we continue to clutter space as our communication and technological needs grow?

I thought this was an interesting bit of info too:

Satellites have an operating lifespan between five and twenty years. Currently, the former Soviet states launch about 1,300 satellites into orbit per year, the USA about 1,000, Japan 100, China 50, France 40, India 30, the UK 25, and a few from Australia and Israel. The company Sea Launch — a consortium of four companies from the United States, Russia, Ukraine and Norway — launches a few satellites into orbit from international waters every year.

From orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov...


"Approximately 17,000 objects larger than 10 cm are known to exist. The estimated population of particles between 1 and 10 cm in diameter is greater than 200,000. The number of particles smaller than 1 cm probably exceeds tens of millions. "

I think that old satellites will be a great problem in the future and some international treaty about that problem should be signed. A while ago I saw that some Ebglish company has a concept of spacecraft that would refuel and repair old satellites in geostacionary orbit. It would refuel them through engine nozzle and if necessary (usualy not) repair them. I think such projects should be sponsored to solve the problem.

Have you ever seen that java app that shows you all the objects?? forgot the site but its good to see!! "i will try find it" You can download data from most so they track em alot in real time.. like weather ones! or landsat ect

But its a good subject. What do we do with them? all this junk? shoot em down??? pointless!!

We should just Think better about what we are doing with "minimoons" All the stuff in space could be placed on the moon as static objects and do the same stuff "most" of them as the world spins and the moond does not!

Just an idea!

Dont know how true it is but I did read somewhere that we have something already that can go up there, bring satelites down for small repairs and such, then send them back on their way. But like I said, I dunno how true that is.

That does exist. It's called Spaceshuttle But it's far to expensive. You have to have an spacecraft in orbit and repair/refuel satellites in orbit to bring the costs down... It would still be pretty expensive...

That is a lot of junk up there but it all has a small lifespan. Eventually they all have to come back to Earth due to the decay of their orbit.

reply to post by theresult


Used to have that link. Lost now.

Here's a substitute, though.

Earth orbiting objects



Edit to add this short animation showing man-made debris by years.

Space debris accumulate: 1957-2000



[edit on Fri Dec 26 2008 by Jbird]

Perhaps is crazy, but..

if it is so costly to put material on orbit, .. its not posible to reuse it to build new things,

i supose the problem is it has to be automatic, but..

can the be done in more standard pieces for reuse or can they be melted, or forwarded to the moon to be melted,

i supose energy is cheap to send to orbit or moon (laser,..)

i know its a kids question but,.. all that extreme cost of kgs of material to put in orbit, for a few years, perhaps it can start to be used to grow a permanent station if a melting or reprofit facility is made..