Prof. Sam Lawler13h ago

Great article by @startswithabang about how crowded it's getting up there (with lots of quotes from me): https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/earths-orbit-is-getting-crowded-heres-how-we-avoid-a-disaster/

By the way, the CRASH Clock, how long it would take for a collision in orbit if all satellite maneuvers suddenly stopped, is now down to 3 days as of late March (down from 3.8 days in January, and 5.5 days last June. Sigh.) https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/

Earth’s orbit is getting crowded. Here’s how we avoid a disaster.

We’ve populated low-Earth orbit with satellites in record time — now we have to figure out how to keep it safe.

Big Think
Show threadNazim Bharmal12h ago
@sundogplanets @startswithabang Wow. Yet another doomsday clock, almost.
Show threadDMTom
@nab26 @sundogplanets @startswithabang yea, but this one has a quite short window from now till basically loosing LEO (at least for people) for many decades. Dr. Kessler (of the syndrome fame) and co. wrote a paper quite recently - and, long story short - we have maybe 11 years max - if we don’t drastically reduce the constellations, and we are rapidly increasing their numbers. Anyway, the paper in question https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09643
8:21pmMastodon for iOS
Show threadProf. Sam Lawler7h ago
@DMTomas @nab26 @startswithabang Just popping in to clarify, this paper you linked here was written by a team that did include me, and did not include Donald Kessler, though we reference his work.