Amid rising space junks, SpaceX launched 60 more satellites to earth’s orbit

NIRMAL YESODA

On September 22, the International Space Station (ISS) performed a very dangerous maneuver to avoid a collision from a small piece of space junk. According to NASA, there could be more than 170 million pieces of space junks in the earth’s orbit, and it ranges from damaged rockets to malfunctioned satellites.

Amid this chaos, SpaceX founder Elon Musk, launched its 14th group of 60 satellites from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, as part of the Starlink Broadband project.

After the Sunday’s launch, the number of Starlink satellites in the earth’s orbit became 800. According to Starlink, the ultimate aim of the company is to deploy 42,000 satellites on the earth’s orbit. SpaceX claims that the aim of these Starlink satellites is to provide high-speed internet in all nooks of the world.

Even though Elon Musk’s Starlink project is receiving positive responses from all corners, a section of astronomers believes that this rise in the number of satellites could negatively affect stargazing, and may even trap humans on the earth.

A few months back, the Royal Astronomical Society had expressed their concern over the rising number of Starlink constellations in the low-earth orbit.

“The Royal Astronomical Society notes with concern the launch of the new SpaceX Starlink constellation of satellites into low-Earth orbit, and the potential impact of this and other programs on views of the night sky and on astronomical research. Increasing the number of satellites so significantly presents a challenge to ground-based astronomy,” said the Royal Astronomical Society, in a recent statement.

Several space scientists also suggest that thousands of satellites in the earth’s orbit may trap humans, and could even affect future space missions, as humans are now trying to broaden their horizon to emerge as a multi-planetary species.