Apparently there are around 3500 in orbit though only about 1000 are still functional. We’ll probably never know the true number as some are kept secret from the public.
Like Stephen says, there are around 1500 working satellites, but NASA thinks there are over 500,000 pieces of broken debris, old satellites, and just general “space junk” orbiting the Earth!
A lot of people are worried about how much “space junk” there is, because it makes sending missions up very dangerous – you don’t want to hit an old satellite with a tank full of explosive rocket fuel, especially at speeds of up to 17,500 miles per hour! We try and send satellites that don’t work any more into a “decaying orbit”, meaning they burn up as they graze the Earth’s atmosphere, but a lot are still up there getting in the way. There are some cool ideas about how to clean up all this space-junk, including big nets, lasers, or even robots like the WALL-E that clean them up for us!
Comments