We're entombing the Earth in an impenetrable shell of dead satellites - Engadget

Today more than 3,000 satellites circle the Earth and they are joined by millions of pieces of space debris — such as bits of broken satellite, discarded rocket parts and flecks of spacecraft paint.

NASA estimates that there’s around 6,000 tonnes of debris in Low Earth Orbit alone.

A study recently accepted by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters suggests that there is now nowhere on Earth free from the light pollution produced by overhead debris and satellites.

Both of these programs seek to create an orbital network in Low Earth Orbit capable of providing high-bandwidth, low-latency internet connectivity accessible from anywhere on the planet.

This is due to two factors: orbital speed (lower altitude satellites move faster so spend less time on each pixel) and focus (lower altitude satellites are less in-focus, so the streak is wider but has a lower peak brightness,” University of Washington astronomer Dr.

These include limiting constellations to a maximum altitude of 550 - 600 km, requiring individual satellites to have a stellar magnitude of +7 or higher, and sharing orbital information regarding these constellations with the research community so that astronomers can avoid those areas of the sky.

But even if satellite operators do manage to turn down the brightness of their constellations, we are still faced with an increasingly dense orbital “graveyard” of broken satellites and overhead space junk.

NASA became the first national space agency to develop a comprehensive space debris mitigation plan in 1995.

The US government also established its Orbital Debris Mitigation Standard Practices (ODMSP) in 2001, in a renewed effort to “limit the generation of new, long-lived debris by the control of debris released during normal operations, minimizing debris generated by accidental explosions, the selection of safe flight profile and operational configuration to minimize accidental collisions, and post-mission disposal of space structures.” Additionally, the Department of Defense operates the Space Surveillance Network, which is charged with cataloging and tracking objects between 0.12 and 4 inches in diameter using a combination of ground-based visual telescopes and radar arrays.

A number of space agencies are in the process of developing systems to actively capture and dispose of orbital refuse.

“Each piece of junk in space is owned by the original operators and orbital debris is not addressed explicitly in current international law