The number is increasing fast, which is problematic.
The number of satellites orbiting the Earth is increasing exponentially. (Image credit: Shutterstock) Human-made satellites were once rare in low Earth orbit (LEO), with just a handful of them rotating around the planet at the dawn of the Space Age in the 1950s. But now, there are thousands of satellites swarming around Earth, with even more waiting to join them. So, to put an exact number on it, how many satellites are orbiting Earth, and how many might join them in the near future? And once all of these satellites are spaceborne, what types of problems might they cause? After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first human-made satellite, in 1957, a slow but steady stream of satellites entered LEO, with between 10 and 60 launched annually until the 2010s, Supriya Chakrabarti, a professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, wrote in an article published on Space.com, a Live Science sister site. Since then, that rate has skyrocketed, with more than 1,300 new satellites launched into LEO in 2020 and more than 1,400 satellites launched in 2021, Chakrabarti wrote. In total, there were around 7,500 active satellites in LEO as of September 2021, according to the United Nations‘ Outer Space Objects Index. Related: Does the moon rotate? Crowded market The number of satellites in LEO, a region that spans up to 1,424 miles (2,000 kilometers) from Earth, will continue to increase at an exponential rate in the coming decades. That’s because private companies are setting up their own megaconstellations, each containing thousands of individual satellites, which will be used to develop faster online networks and deliver a range of other services, such as monitoring climate change. This increased activity is happening now largely because of dropping costs, said Aaron Boley, an astronomer at The University of British Columbia. „We know SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon and StarNet/GW [China’s satellite network] have proposed a combined satellite total of 65,000 when including all phases“ of their satellite programs, Boley told Live Science. And „well over 100,000 satellites have been proposed“ in total, he added. In October 2021, Rwanda also announced its own megaconstellation, named Cinnamon, which could contain over 320,000 satellites. It is unclear when this project might become a reality, but the country has requested permission to begin the project, according to a tweet by the Rwanda Space Agency. However, all these new satellites come with a host of new issues, as highlighted by a May 2021 study into megaconstellations co-led by Boley and published in the journal Scientific Reports. „It causes a space traffic management problem, it will exacerbate the proliferation of space debris, it is interfering with astronomy and stargazing, and the rocket launches and reentries cause atmospheric pollution,“ Boley said. „We’re still trying to understand the extent of the impacts.“ Space traffic and debris As more satellites are launched into orbit in the coming decades, the number of collisions and subsequent space debris are likely to soar.
