A blazing space race that could bring the sky down on our heads

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A blazing space race that could bring the sky down on our heads

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• The sky may fall: Many cartoon characters often wondered if the sky may fall on their heads, and when the world was preoccupied with Covid and vaccines, the booster rocket of Chinese Long March satellite did fall to the ground! It went straight into the waters of Indian ocean, reminding the world of some real dangers.
• Fourth time the sky fell: This was the fourth such "re-entry", the biggest being the 1979 Soviet Skylab's fall.

1. Of the 12.8 crore manmade objects orbiting Earth, 34000 are bigger than 10 cm, of which 3000 are live satellites, and 50 are now-dead huge boosters (weighing tonnes)
2. All are circling endlessly, waiting for re-entry into atmosphere
3. Their probability of falling in a populated area is negligible, though real

• Two rich men: Two of the richest men are launching thousands of satellites, building space internet frameworks, lured by the pot of gold waiting for anyone who can offer 5G internet everywhere on Earth.

1. Elon Musk (Tesla fame) has launched the Starlink satellite network, built by SpaceX, and thousands of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) are being launched. These are now brightly visible in night sky. People often confuse them with UFOs, and astronomers struggle sometimes to peer past those.
2. Amazon's Jeff Bezos is building the LEO project called "Kuiper Project", where 3000 satellites are being sent by his Blue Origin company.
3. Airtel's Sunil Mittal is working with UK govt., Softbank and Hughes Network for OneWeb project of 650 satellites.
4. China is building a 13000 satellite Hongyan system.
5. Billionaire Richard Branson is using Virgin Galactic to launch satellites from Boeing planes at 35000 feet!

• Hyper competition in space: It seems that the rich and powerful aren't satisfied with the Earth, and want to fight in space! Jeff Bezos took NASA to the court, when it awarded the "take us to moon project Artemis worth $2.9 b" to SpaceX and not him. 
• Pot of gold: The real reason is that the mad rush for building satellite networks is to build a global 5G space internet network. Billions are still unconnected with the internet, and in the post-pandemic world internet is life itself. Half the world is waiting to be connected.

1. Musk's estimate is $30 b per annum revenue for Starlink
2. Bezos has left Amazon to focus solely on Blue Origin and Earth Fund ($10 b)

• Satellite internet: It has its pluses - no right-of-way permissions and costs, less environmental damage (no digging for cables), and 40% higher speeds. But launches are expensive and complex, and the poor may not be able to finally afford it.
• Debris of dreams: Every satellite, space probe, and crewed mission has the potential to produce space debris. The thousands of satellites (3000 today) around Earth threaten to break apart into ten times those numbers. Navigation is getting tougher steadily, and every collision makes more collisions possible. The Kessler Syndrome may happen one day. [A scenario called the Kessler Syndrome can cause the end of all space exploration and impact daily lives. Scientist Donald Kessler proposed in 1978 that a chain reaction of exploding space debris in the LEOs can make space activities and the use of satellites impossible for years together]
• Summary: Interesting times ahead, with multiple risks involved at each step.

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