If there are many satellites orbiting earth, how do space launches not bump into any of them?
In: 2066
The earth is enormous, and many satellites orbit so high up that the circumference of their orbit is significantly bigger than the Earth’s circumference. On top of this, satellites orbit at different altitudes.
If you were to go up into space, you would not see any satellites or space junk at all. Similarly, if you were out directly I’m the middle of the asteroid belt, you most likely wouldn’t see a single asteroid at all. Space is BIG.
Hitting a satellite would be equivalent to flying in a straight line around the earth and just happening to collide with a specific parrot living in a remote jungle in an Indonesian island. Or a bird migrating from Uruguay to Hawaii. It’s simply so unlikely that we don’t need to worry.
But still, we track all satellites and most space junk larger than a few centimeters across. Just to be on the safe side 🙂
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