Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk risk triggering nightmare Kessler Syndrome as billionaires enter space race
Both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are risking triggering the nightmare Kessler Syndrome as the billionaires enter into a space race.
While SpaceX’s Starlink is the largest satellite communications service, with over 7,000 satellites, it seems like there could soon be competition.
This is after Amazon announced its plans to send up over 3,000 satellites into orbit in order to create its own communications service.
Meanwhile, SpaceX intends to send up tens of thousands more in the coming years.
Advert
This could prove to be problematic as there are already thousands of satellites orbiting at 17,000 mph around Earth.
If too many objects end up in low orbit, it could trigger something known as the Kessler Syndrome.
The Kessler Syndrome is a scenario that was first thought up in 1978 by two NASA scientists - Donald Kessler and Burton Cour-Palais.
The theory is that, if we keep sending more and more spacecraft into space, then the space around Earth is going to become overcrowded.
Speaking to The Independent, Dr. John Crassidis, who is a professor at the University of Buffalo and works with NASA, the military, and other agencies to monitor space debris, said: “If we don’t do something to start correcting this problem, in 50 years Kessler Syndrome is going to be a reality and low-Earth orbit is going to be useless.”
NASA said: “Spent rockets, satellites and other space trash have accumulated in orbit increasing the likelihood of collision with other debris.
“Unfortunately, collisions create more debris creating a runaway chain reaction of collisions and more debris known as the Kessler Syndrome after the man who first proposed the issue, Donald Kessler.”
In the worst case scenario, a chain reaction of collisions could be caused that has the potential to destroy essential communications satellites around the planet.
In this case, the situation will then become so volatile that we can't successfully send up new satellites to replace the broken ones due to the area of space in which they orbit becoming unstable and full of fast-moving debris.
This debris will smash anything new into a thousand pieces.
There are currently more than 10,000 satellites orbiting the Earth and more than 100 trillion pieces of old satellites still circling the planet, with parts occasionally falling into Earth's atmosphere over time and burning up.
This space race between Musk and Bezos could spell disaster for the collection of satellites in orbit around Earth.