One of the best parts of my academic committee work is that I get regular meetings with @planet4589.bsky.social, who is a lovely human and has the best public database on launches and reentries https://planet4589.org/space/index.html
The worst part is hearing all the stuff that happened in orbit since the last time we met.... A few highlights from today's meeting:
-There are now 10,049 Starlink satellites above our heads. More than 1,500 have already been burned up in Earth's atmosphere.
-The really fun tidbit of info from today's meeting: apparently there are still 40 or so Soviet uranium-fueled nuclear reactor cores in orbit at about 900km altitude. Just to make any possible future Kessler syndrome even more exciting? (Maybe someone should model how likely the Kessler Syndrome collisional cascade is to reach 900km altitude... or maybe not)
A super interesting but depressing podcast about Kosmos 954 here: https://www.cbc.ca/arts/operation-morning-light-podcast-soviet-satellite-exploded-traditional-dene-land-1.6650994
I thought that 900km was already beyond the runaway threshold:
https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/305/SDC9-paper305.pdf
Prof. Sam Lawler
Knud Jahnke