Nasa concerned about rise in low Earth orbit crashes with 30,000 Starlink satellites planned

In a letter submitted to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday, Nasa also voiced unease about the potential to disturb space and ground-based telescopes and disrupt its launch schedules.

“With the increase in large constellation proposals to the FCC, Nasa has concerns with the potential for a significant increase in the frequency of conjunction events and possible impacts to Nasa’s science and human space flight missions,” said the letter signed by Samantha Fonder, Nasa’s representative to the Commercial Space Transportation Interagency Group.

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Nasa puts spacecraft on collision course with asteroid to test possible Earth defence system

Nasa puts spacecraft on collision course with asteroid to test possible Earth defence system

There are currently some 25,000 objects tracked on-orbit and about 6,100 of those have a perigee – point closest to Earth – below 600km. SpaceX’s plan for the larger, second-generation constellation would boost traffic congestion across the Earth’s orbit, with the number of tracked objects in low Earth orbit increasing more than five times, Nasa said.

“An increase of this magnitude into these confined altitude bands inherently brings additional risk of debris-generating collision events based on the number of objects alone,” the letter stated. “Nasa anticipates current and planned science missions, as well as human space flight operations, will see an increase in conjunctions.”

Nasa also questioned SpaceX claims there was no risk of collision with large objects because of Starlink satellites’ manoeuvrability.

Operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Starlink is a satellite constellation authorised for 4,408 satellites, all in orbits around 550km (340 miles), to provide internet from space. So far it has more than 2,000 satellites in orbit, according to planet4589.org, a website that tracks satellites in orbit and other space-related activity.