ParisActive satellites in orbit jumped from 1,000 to 17,000.
More objects mean more collisions, and a bad one could make some orbits unusable for everyone.
Federal Communications Commission filings show SpaceX performs nearly 35,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers a month, up from 500 five years ago.
“We are going to lose the ability to use certain orbits,” said Moriba Jah, University of Texas at Austin professor.
Bands between 520 and 1,000 kilometers up have already crossed a runaway collision threshold, a 2025 study found.
How each outlet framed it
- Ars Technica leans critical
- quantifies satellite growth (1,000→17,000 since 2013, Starlink 11,000) as Kessler syndrome threshold
Sources: Ars Technica