r/Damnthatsinteresting Mar 06 '25

GIF RemoveDEBRIS satellite harpoons space junk in a plan to clean Earth's orbit

10.0k Upvotes

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39

u/Nami_Pilot Mar 06 '25

Elmo wants to put 42,000 satellites in orbit (curently 7,000). Each of which could be reduced to thousands of pieces of debris by an impact event. This could potentially lead to the Kessler effect becoming reality, rendering certain orbital altitudes unusable as they would become debris fields.

36

u/redstercoolpanda Mar 06 '25

I love when people with absolutely zero idea how Kessler syndrome works outside of clickbait doom posting headlines chimes in about Starlink.

-8

u/Aridross Mar 06 '25

Look up how many crashes Starlink has narrowly avoided with other satellites while it’s been active. At least to the layman, it’s not a pretty number.