How many satellites orbit the earth?

Weather of Arabia - At the dawn of the space age during the fifties of the last century, satellites were rare, as a few of them orbited the planet in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but now, there are thousands of satellites roaming around the Earth, and there are more waiting join it.

How many satellites are there around the earth?

After the Soviet Union launched "Sputnik", the world's first satellite in 1957 AD, satellites began to flow into low Earth orbit, with the launch of between 10 - 60 satellites annually until 2010, and this rate has increased since then. More than 1,300 new satellites will be launched into LEO in 2020, and more than 1,400 satellites will be launched in 2021.

In total, there were about 7,500 satellites in low Earth orbit by September 2021, according to the United Nations Outer Space Objects Index.

That number rose to 8,578 satellites in Earth orbit by October 2022, according to the United Nations' Outer Space Objects Index. It tracks 75 countries. About 5,058 satellites belong to the United States, followed by Russia with 1,375. (Update 10-10-2022)

The number of satellites to be launched in the near future

Expected congestion in Earth's orbit

The number of satellites in low Earth orbit (an area extending up to 2,000 km above the Earth's surface) will continue to increase at an exponential rate in the coming decades, as private companies build their own huge constellations, each containing thousands of individual satellites, which will be They can be used to develop faster online networks and to provide a range of other services, such as monitoring climate change.

This increased activity is now taking place in large part due to lower costs. SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon and StarNet/GW have proposed a total of 65,000 satellites when all phases of their satellite programs are included, and a total of more than 100,000 have been proposed. industrially.

And in October 2021, Rwanda also announced its massive constellation called "Cinnamon", which could contain more than 320,000 satellites . .

This could exacerbate the spread of space debris, interfere with astronomy and stargazing, and rocket launches and repatriations pollute the atmosphere, and scientists are still studying the extent of other effects.

The problems that all those satellites might cause

Space jam and space debris

As more satellites are launched into orbit in the coming decades, the number of collisions and subsequent space debris is likely to rise , as there are already at least 128 million pieces of debris in LEO , of which, about 34,000 are over 34,000 long. centimeters, and there will be more to come.

Collisions aren't the only source of space debris, satellites can also malfunction from prolonged exposure to intense ultraviolet radiation in low Earth orbit.

Space debris has the potential to cause severe damage to other satellites, as well as other spacecraft.

In June 2021, the International Space Station was hit by a piece of debris that punched a hole in a robotic arm. Thankfully, the space station and the astronauts inside avoided any major damage.

Ultimately, the number of satellites in LEO could lead to a series of collisions that would scatter space debris around LEO, to the point where we wouldn't be able to launch new missiles.

However, removing space debris from LEO is a logistical challenge and there is not yet an agreed upon method for removing debris.

Pollution from launch and re-entry of satellite-carrying missiles

Earth's atmosphere pollution

The aerospace industry has a much lower carbon footprint than other industries, as the average launch of a missile results in between (200 to 300 metric tons) of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere, while the average result of a long-range commercial flight is about (1.8 to 2.7 metric tons) of carbon per passenger, and there are tens of millions of flights every year.

However, as the demand for rockets needed to launch satellites increased, carbon emissions from rocket launches increased by 5.6% annually.

And it's not just satellite launches, when satellites eventually re-enter Earth's atmosphere, they also release chemicals into the atmosphere.

A study revealed that, in the future, satellite reentries could end up adding more certain elements (such as aluminum) to Earth's atmosphere than meteorites do, and this alters atmospheric chemistry.

Furthermore, as satellites re-enter the atmosphere, they can also cause significant damage to Earth, but modern satellites are designed to break apart into smaller pieces upon re-entry, so there is less material that reaches the surface, and space debris typically lands in Water that covers about 71% of the Earth's surface.

light pollution

In the future, the increased activity of satellites will be clearly visible from Earth, as metallic objects will act like mirrors, reflecting light back toward the Earth's surface, and the sheer number of them will radically change our view of the night sky.

A study on light pollution published in September 2021 revealed that up to 8% of the light in the night sky could come from satellites in the future, and the study also found that places near 50 degrees north and south latitude could be affected by light pollution. It has more satellites than other sites, due to the proposed future satellite orbits.

The spectacle of stars in the sky could be confused in the future, and perhaps as many as 1 in 10 "bright stars" in the sky could be satellites, and this would interfere not only with amateur stargazing, but also with professional astronomers' observation.

The need to find balance

With the harmful effects mentioned by satellites, satellites remain an important means of providing us with essential services. Satellites play a key role in many fields, including weather monitoring , climate science, global communications, and search and rescue.

So humanity has to find a balance between the negative impacts and the functional importance of satellites, and it might be wise to slow things down and delay putting in 100,000 satellites until we have better international rules that ensure the safety of our planet.