Sunday, October 08, 2017

There is a lot of junk in space

Of the 4,000 satellites orbiting earth, only 1,400 are working. Plus, there are about 5,000 metric tons of garbage from the working satellites. So, maneuvering around this junk to avoid hitting it is not an easy task. Some of our legislators are concerned and have asked the FCC to work with NASA to keep the number of satellites manageable. 

The junk is not necessarily a whole satellite; just a tiny fleck of paint from an old satellite can cause a lot of damage. Yet, many companies, such as SpaceX and Boeing, want to launch even more satelites. SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 more by 2024 to build out a broadband network in space.

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