when new satellites get launched by private companies, how do they know what height / trajectory to launch them at without having any collisions with existing satellites?
In: Technology
private companies still interact with government agencies; and it will always be “bad” for business to launch a satellite just to have it crash into another one
once your company has been approved for spaceflight; you get access to shared information about other objects relevant to the mission. (locally kown….you might not get a list of all spy satellites in the area)
Short answer? There’s a register you can check, plot your orbit and register your new satellite to:
[https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/spaceobjectregister/index.html](https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/spaceobjectregister/index.html)
The biggest protection satellites have against collisions is the fact that space is huge and the satellites are small. So the chance that two satellites are in the same location at the same time is extremely small. You can launch a satellite into a random orbit and have it orbit for fifty years and still not expect the satellite to crash into anything major.
But just in case they do usually pick orbits based on what they are doing, so most satellites that does similar things end up moving in the same direction and therefore do not hit each other. And there is databases of all the satellites and their orbits so you can check if the orbit you plan intercept any of them. Satellites do randomly shift their orbits so these databases are constantly updated using radar tracking stations. They use the old radar stations designed to detect incoming nuclear missiles but these have not gotten enough funding for the past thirty years so our coverage is getting worse. When a radar station detect that two satellites would get close to each other they will attempt to contact the owners of the satellites. A lot of satellites have thrusters and are able to move a bit to avoid a collision. So far there have only been a handful of satellite collisions.
Space big, satellites small.
Plus we know where all the other ones are so we can launch them into an empty spot in the orbit.
Satellite launches and locations are highly regulated and coordinated. Various agencies around the world organize space and arrange where each satellite is allowed to be, providing appropriate space for it, and safety, and contingency if anything goes wrong
This is actually a major business issue in getting the “best” satellite spot for your satellite as many spaces you might want get filled up.
For example, launching a satellite tv sat in the US, you’d ideally want to be roughly over the middle of the US, so you can beam signal from one satellite to the whole country. But those spaces are pretty full. So you may instead need to launch two satellites. One more west and one mote east to cover the whole country, or some other type of orbit.
There’s no guesswork. This is all very regulated and solved science, long before a launch is ever made. A satellite may also be purpose built for where in space it is going to be, depending on what it’s used for
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