There are over 10.000 Satellites Circling The Earth?

Question

Shoot and I was worried about an asteroid falling in to earth. I can't believe there are that many satellites circling above us?

Answer 1

That is not all - there are also the mission related objects: optics covers, latches, bolts and despin jojos.

Luckily, most parts of a satellite will never reach Earth. Also most satellites will never reach Earth. They are too far away for entering the atmosphere one day. Instead, they will leave earth one day and travel on the Interplanetary Highway System, like many thousand other objects.

Answer 2

a satellite is not an asteroid.

wow

Answer 3

It may seem that way...however, consider that the Earth is nearly 8,000 miles in diameter.  Using the formula for area of a sphere, the surface area for the satellite orbital path would be 231,596,312 sq. miles.

This means that each satellite has about 23,000 square miles all to itself, or an area about the size of West Virginia.  Imagine, if you can, two cars, heaed the same direction, driving around in circles across the West Virginia landscape.  The chances of them randomly hitting each other would be about the same as two satellites in space.  And, without a collision, there really isn't any way they would come straight down.  Their orbits slowly decay, and, if one were to come down, it would do so at such an extreme angle that it would burn up.

Answer 4

They're small enough that they would burn up upon re-entry. I wouldn't worry about it.

Answer 5

The vast majority of objects orbiting the Earth are not active spacecraft or satellites at all. Most of them are satellites that failed or reached the end of their lives, spent rocket stages and booster rockets, as well as payload shrouds, spin up mechanisms and other things released when satellites are launched. There's also numerous shards of metal that resulted from the explosion of spent rocket stages and satellites as well as explosions due to accidents or anti-satellite weapon tests. These are also accompanied by tiny flecks of paint, aluminum oxide from solid rocket motors, even drops of liquid metal coolant that leaked out of nuclear powered spy satellites. There's a lot of stuff whizzing around the Earth out there, and much of it can kill an astronaut or destroy a satellite. Some of this debris will stay up there forever, while the rest will after years or decades fall into the Earth's atmosphere, break apart and incinerate, leaving the most heat resistant pieces to fall into ocean or land somewhere.

Answer 6

Most are really small and will burn up in the atmosphere before making it to the ground.  The International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope are exceptions. There are others in geosynchronous orbit, but that orbit is stable for quite a long time.

There also were fewer than 10,000 launches.  Many of these satellites are fragments of larger objects that broke up.  They pose a threat to other satellites, but not to things on the ground. Some of these are spent rocket stages.  Some rockets launched more than one satellite.