Orbital Crowding

The number of artificial objects launched into space during recent years has increased rapidly. Achieving global telecommunications coverage with low signal latency has resulted in the deployment of large ‘constellations’ of satellites at relatively low altitudes above Earth. One consequence of this is that the average density of objects per unit volume of space has also increased. This means that the average distance between objects is decreasing, raising the probability that some will collide with each other. Despite efforts to prevent collisions by precisely predicting the positions of objects and maneuvering them to avoid each other, a higher density of orbiting objects leads to a higher probability of accidents.