With mega-constellation launches accelerating, the sci‑fi premise of imprisoning ourselves behind a debris field feels less fictional. This is essentially the collision-cascade risk described by Kessler Syndrome
Kurzgesagt has a good explainer. Hopefully we never trigger it.
Not all the satellites that you can see will be "looking" in your direction for a signal. They support some number of cells (specific, small, geographic regions on the ground). No one satellite can cover the entire ground visible to it while overhead so more satellites are needed.
And to add to the above, Starlink is using laser crosslinks to connect their satellites to each other for routing. This crosslink network is improved with more satellites visible to each other.
The actual reason for these new megaconstellations having so many is spatial frequency reuse through directional transmission/reception beams: More satellites means less users competing for each satellite's spectrum-limited bandwidth.
In fact, more than one (or maybe two, for geometric reasons near the equator where polar orbits are sparse etc.) satellite concurrently visible is pointless if the ground station/mobile device isn't also heavily directional, which is not the case for small, quickly moving handheld devices at least.
One other reason for wanting more satellites splitting footprint coverage between them would be if the satellite transmitters were transmit power limited.
Only if you're not bandwidth limited. Having more satellites per steradian of sky allows reusing the same frequency via (physically or electronically) aiming at a particular satellite.
Yeah, no, the numbers don't work for this. The Kessler syndrome is bad, and worth avoiding, but you aren't trapped.
The trick is that you're not staying. Suppose a comms satellite in LEO would, as a result of a hypothetical cascade like this, be destroyed on average in six months but your space vehicle to somewhere else passes through the debris field in like 5 minutes. So your risk is like one in 50 000. That's not good but it wouldn't stop us from leaving.
The reason humans won't leave is more boring and less SF, there is nowhere to go. Nowhere else is anywhere close to habitable, this damp rock is where we were born and it's where we will die, we should take better care of it.
Now I'm not saying it's necessarily a smart allocation of resources. But it does follow the popular IT saying "one is none, two is one. If you care about something make sure you have a backup"
Even if we get stuck in the "initial colony" stage (which is not the plan of any Mars-colonization proponent) with precautions comparable to the ISS you'd still have a colony capable of surviving a minimum of four years (two launch windows, in case one delivery goes wrong) and the capability to return to Earth.
In the US, you’re probably voting for people who will be making the nuclear war decisions…
It won’t be a freak accident, it will be a result of the democracy you participate in.
It's just so bleak. We did this for what? To have _more_ internet?! Is that really what we need?
For the predictable reasons, the article overemphasizes "number of satellites" and under-emphasizes "height of satellites" and "inclination of satellites."
The CTC-1 constellation proposes to be at 510 km altitude and 97.4 degrees inclination[0], which is already a heavily-populated orbit[1] due to being in a Sun-synchronous orbit. Since the collision risk scales as the object density squared, this is an especially foolhardy decision from the perspective of space debris and space sustainability.
Remember that most of the satellite collisions occur in a "halo" around the North and South poles where the SSO orbits all pile up. Avoiding these orbital slots (and in fact, removing defunct objects from these valuable orbits) is the best thing we could do for Kessler syndrome. China is doing literally the exact opposite.
It also doesn't help that China just abandons their upper stages in orbit, rather than doing proper deorbit burns.[2] Since each Chinese rocket also can only launch a handful of satellites (vs almost 50 per SpaceX launch), the number of abandoned debris upper stages is truly massive, and again they're all being carelessly discarded in pretty much the worst possible orbit.
[0] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;...
[1] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=44021.0
[2] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/everyone-but-china-has...
High enough that atmospheric drag doesn't require constant propulsion to maintain orbit.
Low enough to get some radiation shielding.
Lower orbits better for communication latency and imaging resolution.
Also sun-synchronous orbits are in this zone.
Good balance for coverage vs number of satellites.
There are a lot of strategic reasons why this altitude is ideal.
The consequence here is that a space debris problem may last hundreds of years.
PRC are being careless in 800km orbit, which is actually much worse, but historically that's where US / USSR abandoned debris, PRC still small %, either way it's just stopgap for reusables, they obviously can't hit 200k mega constellation without reusable tempo. In meantime no point reengineering end of life vehicles since reusable replacement likely going to be done by then, especially at risk of missing delivery/capability to keep ITU filings, or worse, lose them to competitors (US).
Lets be real, space is being soft weaponized post SpaceX/Starshield, space debris/sustainability can wait, launch is realpolitik now. Much more important to be competitive = reserving prime orbits ITU has available in limited quantities, first file first serve. Starlink's done their own orbit squatting, PRC simply making sure strategic LEO isn't monopolized by US mega constellations.
> "The CTC-1 constellation proposes to be at 510 km altitude and 97.4 degrees inclination[0]"
That's an unrelated "CTC-1"; your reference [0] describes American CubeSats. This isn't the Chinese megaconstellation that was just announced; it's a name collision.
The CTC-1 in your link is identified as a trio of CubeSats assigned to the SpaceX rideshare mission Transporter 15. Cross-referencing, SpaceX does show of trio of small satellites by the name "CTC-1" (a,b,c) launched on Transporter 15, on Nov. 28, 2025,
https://www.spacex.com/launches/transporter-15 ("Transporter-15 Mission")
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orbital_Debris_Lifet...
> At 4:11 a.m. on April 14, 2007, the BeiDou satellite, which was tasked with carrying out an important mission, took off and sent back a signal at around 8 p.m. on April 17. At this point, there were less than four hours left before the ITU's "seven-year deadline."
1. regulatory squatting on good mega constellation orbits.
2. if i'm reading this right PRC needs to hit 9k in 9 years, 100k in 14 years. Seems doable on PRC speed. If it's half, i.e. 100k with 5 years of filing, then no way target will be hit.
And of those countries who would like to have a system free of influence from other countries, well, if they can't afford to build one out, they might be able to orbit a bunch of chaff to even the playing field again.
- French state(29%),
- Bharti Airtel -Indian telecom group (17%),
- UK government (10%),
- SoftBank (10%) -Japanese bank
- CMA CGM(7.5%) french shipping company
- a consortium of French insurance companies with 5% .
Till recently a South Korean conglomerate Hanwha also had 5% stake .
there is a significant concentration of holding by national governments, UK do have a golden share protecting their strategic needs , but their investment is now a small minority.
it is mostly French company today with diversified direct interests from 4-5 major countries.
> Starlink was sold to investors as being politically neutral and almost immediately became a US military asset.
> And of those countries who would like to have a system free of influence from other countries
- https://press.un.org/en/2019/gadis3635.doc.htm
- https://web.archive.org/web/20201028152258/https://www.stopk...
Sure this is important but what is more important is 8 billion people having and keeping their access to space.
nkurz•3w ago
kikkia•3w ago
As for the state of these networks, G60/Qianfan had a plan of ~650 sattelites by the end of 2025, but currently sits at 108. They hope for ~1200 by the end of '27
Just before the end of the year the GuoWang constellation hit 136 of their planned 13,000.
For reference starlink has launched over 10k satellites to date with ~9,400 in active service.
Im sure the constellations will grow, but they have been experiencing the pains of scaling, especially with 1 use rockets. SCMP loves to pump up these crazy plans and massive numbers as a national pride win, even when they are not feasible or still really far off.
jvanderbot•3w ago
If you add in EU providers, depending in how you count then, there's at least 2 or 3 providers who have more than 100 LEO satellites active.