• Question: How many satellites are orbiting earth write now

    Asked by 873spdm39 to Lisa, Mark, Rachel, Sammie, Stephen, Tim on 7 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Stephen Wilkins

      Stephen Wilkins answered on 7 Mar 2018:


      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.

    • Photo: Tim Duckenfield

      Tim Duckenfield answered on 8 Mar 2018:


      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!

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