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#spacedebris

1 post1 participant0 posts today

"Commerce zeroed out funding for #TracCSS in its fiscal 2026 budget request at a time when the burgeoning number of commercial satellites is making the domain increasingly congested and potentially less safe. ... The #SpaceForce has had the de facto mission to manage space traffic for decades; if TracCSS goes away now, that mission will fall back to the Space Force at a time when the service’s military mission is already growing."

airandspaceforces.com/space-fo

Air & Space Forces Magazine · Space Force Adjusts as Commerce Cuts Space Traffic Management Program | Air & Space Forces MagazineThe Space Force and industry groups oppose Trump administration plans to cut a new civilian Space Traffic Management system in fiscal 2026.

"[University of Southampton professor Hugh] Lewis doesn’t fault operators like #SpaceX, which he says goes above and beyond by choosing orbits where #spacecraft are quickly pulled back into the atmosphere, maneuvering to avoid collisions with other #satellites, and deconflicting with astronomers. The fundamental issue, Lewis says, is that each new object in orbit increases risk.”

payloadspace.com/there-are-too

Payload · There Are Too Many Spacecraft in LEO"That is us academics waving a big, big red flag, to say we can't just keep doing this."

"''The message that I keep trying to deliver to anybody who will listen is: We need to have fewer satellites with longer operational lifetimes. Anything that you can do to make your satellites last longer and to use fewer of them—that is the engineering challenge that we are now facing, and I don’t see anyone really taking that up.'"

Featuring quotes from our members @sundogplanets and @planet4589.

smithsonianmag.com/science-nat

“This work describes the developed #SpaceDebris index, which is defined as a risk indicator following the formulation of the Environmental Consequences of Orbital Breakups (ECOB) index. Further development became necessary mainly due to a change in the population orbiting the Earth. The introduction of a large constellation led to a rapid increase in the number of objects, while also highlighting some critical aspects and limitations of the original formulation.”

sciencedirect.com/science/arti

Brussels moves to tackle satellite junk in space.

The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a new Space Act that seeks to dial up regulatory oversight of satellite operators — including requiring them to tackle their impact on space debris and pollution, or face significant fines.

It’s ‘starting to look like a jungle up there.’

mediafaro.org/article/20250625

A satellite-filled sky. | Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Politico.eu · Brussels moves to tackle satellite junk in space.By Mathieu Pollet
Replied in thread

@sundogplanets
It's also the sort of business that I feel like any state foreign intelligence service ought to be willing to fund. Just in case something they regarded as not being useful to them in space needed to be de-orbited in a responsible and timely manner. I feel like we should try to persuade the band to capitalise on that... 🤪

Regardless, astronomers of the world will be willing to give Space Junk Removal Service a listen ❤️

spacejunkremovalservice.bandca

#SpaceX #starship - the film trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=tiD8nGD0Q6w ... It's a little bit old but still explodes successfully! 😂

The #climate, the #environment, #nature and the taxpayers say thanks to the #billionaire. #sarcasmalarm
And you need much sarcasm reading the fanboys' comments who have no historic knowledge about how much better rockets once were (I watched the first moon landing live).

"'Generally speaking, this is not good for anyone who wants to continue to receive benefits from the use of space. Pieces of debris at that altitude will stick around for years, if not decades. Leaving those rocket bodies at 700-800 km altitude is incredibly irresponsible. China is just beginning to launch its very large constellations so there is time to fix this before it becomes a grave danger.'”

spacenews.com/chinas-megaconst

SpaceNews · China’s megaconstellation launches could litter orbit for more than a century, analysts warnBy Andrew Jones

#SpaceX's "four-page letter lists the alleged flaws with AST's paperwork, concluding that its 'orbital debris mitigation plan fails to demonstrate that the FM1 satellite can operate safely and sustainably.' The same document also faults the application for failing to provide more details on how the company will prevent its satellite from disrupting #astronomy, even though AST recently reached a deal with the US National Science Foundation."

pcmag.com/news/spacex-seizes-o

#Sonnenstürme verkürzen die Lebensdauer von #Starlink-Satelliten und lassen sie schneller zur Erde zurückkehren.

Durch erhöhte #Atmosphärendichte steigt der Luftwiderstand, was zu unvorhersehbaren #Bahnabweichungen führt. Das erschwert die #Kollisionsvermeidung und könnte das Risiko für herabfallende #Trümmerteile erhöhen. Mit Tausenden Satelliten im Orbit wird das #Weltraummanagement zunehmend komplexer.

arxiv.org/abs/2505.13752

arXiv logo
arXiv.orgTracking Reentries of Starlink Satellites During the Rising Phase of Solar Cycle 25The exponential increase of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites in the past 5 years has brought into intense focus the need for reliable monitoring and reentry prediction to safeguard from space collisions and ground debris impacts. However, LEO satellites fly within the upper atmosphere region that exerts significant drag forces to their orbits, reducing their lifetimes, and increasing collision risks during dynamic events, like geomagnetic storms. Such conditions can become more severe during geomagnetic storms, particularly during extreme events. In this work, we use two-line element (TLE) satellite tracking data to investigate geomagnetic activity effects on the reentries of 523 Starlink satellites from 2020 to 2024. This period coincides with the rising phase of solar cycle 25, which has shown itself to be more intense than the previous solar cycle. We derive satellite altitudes and velocities from TLE files and perform a superposed epoch analysis, the first with hundreds of similar satellites. Even with limitedly accurate TLE data, our results indisputably show that satellites reenter faster with higher geomagnetic activity. This is explained by the fastest orbital decay rates (in km/day) of the satellites caused by increased drag forces. We also find that prediction errors, defined as the difference between the epochs of actual reentries and predicted reentries at reference altitudes, increase with geomagnetic activity. As a result, we clearly show that the intense solar activity of the current solar cycle has already had significant impacts on Starlink reentries. This is a very exciting time in satellite orbital drag research, since the number of satellites in LEO and solar activity are the highest ever observed in human history.
SMART 1 / crash site

Replica of a work by the painter Donato Creti (1671-1749) from the series ‘Astronomical Observations’ (1711), which was commissioned by the artist - painted and minimally altered by a copyist. The copyist added a small shadow to the depiction of the moon that refers to the crash site of the lunar probe SMART 1 (ESA), which was deliberately destroyed in 2006 after a mission lasting several years. The outlines are based on a photograph taken by NASA's lunar probe ‘Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’, which captured the crash site.

The work was realized in the frame of an Artist-in-Science Residency at European Space Agency - ESA / ESOC in Darmstadt in 2022, hosted by Kultur einer Digitalstadt e.V..

[Swaantje Güntzel, SMART 1 / crash site, 2022, oil on canvas, 51 x 35 cm]

Foto: Tobias Hübel
Foto crash site: P. Stooke/B. Foing et al 2017/ NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

#art #conceptualart #contemporaryart #womenartists #kunst #konzeptkunst #zeitgenössischekunst #painting #malerei #astronomie #astronomy #donatocreti #smart1 #crashsite #mond #moon #astronomicalobservations #copyist #kopist #esa #nasa #mondsonde #lunarprobe #artistinscience #lunarreconnaissanceorbiter #artistinscienceresidence #swaantjeguentzel #swaantjegüntzel #artistresidency #esoc #darmstadt #kultureinerdigitalstadt #spacedebris #orbitaldebris