The more satellites there are flying around in low-earth orbit, the more likely they are to collide, fragment and spawn an escalating series of collisions. The space industry and its regulators need to disprove that theory — known as the Kessler Effect — to keep insurance costs down and investment plentiful.
Space is certainly getting busier. The number of working and defunct satellites within low-earth orbit has increased by half in the past two years. Starlink, the satellite broadband network planned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, already has permission for 30,000 satellites.
That is more than the total number of orbiting objects currently being tracked by US authorities. Much of the latter is debris left over from decades of space exploration.
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