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US government issues first-ever space debris penalty to Dish Network (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

US government issues first-ever space debris penalty to Dish Network::Dish to pay $150,000 for failing to properly dispose of satellite and violating the FCC’s anti-space debris rule

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But not the moron that launched a car?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That's not the Musk space debris we should be concerned about. The car is orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars, extremely unlikely to be a problem for anyone. A needle in a planet full of haystacks.

Starlink, on the other hand, is several hundreds of satellites orbiting in a shell in low Earth orbit. Close calls happen all the time with these.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) de-orbit themselves within a fairly short time after they run out of fuel keeping them on station. They lose altitude constantly due to air drag (there is a very tiny amount of air in LEO). LEO space junk solves itself.

The type of space junk that can actually be an issue is in other useful orbits, such as the geostationary orbit. Satellites there are expected to move themselves into graveyard orbits at the end of their life so they are out of the way.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Hundreds? There are over 5000 starlink satellites up there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How close are we talking?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-alerts-on-the-rise

According to this article, Starlink satellites are involved in over 1,600 close encounters (within 1 kilometer or 0.6 miles) each week.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hot damn, that is close

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Technically his satellites aren't junking space up, since they just keep burning up.