Latest news with #HughLewis
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Outer Space around earth is already pretty crowded. Tech firms are racing to pack even more satellites in
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways The outer space around the Earth is already pretty crowded. Now, tech firms are racing to add more. There are already thousands of satellites hurdling around the Earth in low orbit - many of them are in groups working together called constellations to provide high-speed internet and communication services. The largest is SpaceX's Starlink, which is made up of more than 7,000 satellites that have been launched since 2019. Now, Amazon is jockeying for position alongside its competitor. This week, it launched the first 27 satellites for its Kuiper broadband internet constellation. The company must launch half of its planned constellation of 3,200 satellites by July of next year to retain its federal license. SpaceX also plans to send up tens of thousands more. But, these and other satellite companies — such as the Chinese internet constellations Guowang and Qianfan — are setting up a space future fraught with peril, according to experts. More satellites shooting around the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour will mean a greater chance of potentially calamitous collisions. 'If we don't do something to start correcting this problem, in 50 years Kessler Syndrome is going to be a reality and low-Earth orbit is going to useless,' Dr. John Crassidis, a professor at the University of Buffalo who works with NASA, the military, and other agencies to monitor space debris, told The Independent. Amazon launched the first of its Kuiper satellites this week, hoping to become competitive with SpaceX's Starlink constellation. But, low-Earth orbit is already crowded and experts say it could get a whole lot worse. (AFP via Getty Images) Kessler Syndrome is a nightmare space scenario in which the number of satellites and orbital debris is so high that collisions occur, generating a cascading series of collisions. Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the U.K.-based University of Southampton who served as a U.K. Space Agency delegate to the European Space Agency's Space Mission Planning Advisory Group said that Earth has been headed toward a perilous future for decades, but a one-off event isn't the biggest concern. 'I just don't think that we can safely manage the number of satellites that are being contemplated; not with our existing knowledge of the space environment,' he said. When the satellites crash into each other is anyone's guess, according to Dr. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 'We'll see more and more satellites doing avoidance maneuvers. What is the point at which they start to actually crash into one another because the algorithms aren't good enough? We just don't know,' he explained. In addition to constellation satellites, there are tens of thousands of other objects and hundreds of thousands of even smaller pieces that cannot be monitored. Active satellites have already been damaged by debris and the International Space Station needs to maneuver away from an object should the chance of a collision exceed one-in-10,000. Starlink is moving satellites closer to the space station, McDowell noted. Chinese systems are going to higher orbits, where and could remain for centuries. There are already tens of thousands of other objects and hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces in low-Earth orbit. The smaller pieces are still concerning (ESA) Crassidis called the current situation 'uncharted territory.' 'But, it's stuff between one centimeter and 10 that we're really worried about because we can't see that stuff. I'm worried about astronauts. They're exposed when they're doing their spacewalks, and a piece of debris that size can go right through them,' he said. But, a solution to these worrying consequences has not yet been found. SpaceX is bringing down older satellites, but there are questions about the impact of that decision on Earth's atmosphere. There are also regulatory questions. To McDowell, there's the appearance of regulation, but it's pretty loose. To Lewis, the regulation is there, but is interpreted differently by each nation, resulting in an uneven playing field. 'In principle, they say what altitudes they're going to be at, at least. But it turns out that the plus or minus on that is so big as to make it almost meaningless,' McDowell said. SpaceX has been launching its Starlink satellites since 2019 and have more planned. (Getty Images) 'We don't have any modern day treaties. We gotta get some treaties, and we know the bad actors are Russia and China,' Crassidis said. 'We need to get some treaties in place to slow down the growth and buys us the time because today's science fiction is tomorrow's reality.' There are also the scientific costs to consider, although SpaceX has accommodated astronomers' concerns about brightness. The satellites can block out the stars, and potentially other objects. Their radio emissions can also disrupt work in deep space. As NASA heads to the moon and Mars, it will need to navigate these impacts and the debris field. That will be challenging for the space agency and tech firms to manage in the coming decades. 'Everything's getting harder, I think. I don't see any change to that, At some point, something will go wrong, I have no doubt,' said Lewis.
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Don't Freak Out, But the Chances of That City Killer Asteroid Hitting Earth Just Ticked Up Again
The potential city-killer asteroid that could strike our planet in 2032 is looking more foreboding by the week. Spotted just after Christmas, the initial odds of the skyscraper-sized space rock, dubbed 2024 YR4, smashing into Earth was put at roughly 1.2 percent, or a 1 in 83 chance. Then it was upgraded to 2.1 percent, or 1-in-48, last week. And now, the latest analysis from NASA has raised the odds yet again. The likelihood of a collision is currently estimated to be 3.1 percent, or about a 1-in-32 chance, according to figures from NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies — nearly three times the initial prediction. These are still slim odds, but they don't feel slim enough. With estimates putting it between 130 and 330 feet in length — a pretty broad range, underscoring how little we know about the asteroid at the moment — YR 2024's impact could potentially unleash an explosion 500 times as powerful as the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, per Wired, at the upper end of the size range. And based on the asteroid's current trajectory, the "risk corridor" illustrating where the object could crash stretches across the Pacific Ocean, with countries ranging from Ecuador to India lying in its damage path. This extent of the carnage assumes that 2024 YR4 is as large as it appears — and doesn't plunk into the ocean (where it could still cause a formidable wave), which makes up nearly three-fourths of the Earth's surface. At any rate, these visions of city-wide destruction may be extremely premature, even if the odds of planetfall have increased. "Just because it's gone up in the last week, doesn't mean that it's going to continue to do that," Hugh Lewis, an astronomer at the UK's University of Southampton, told New Scientist. The asteroid is still only ranked at 3 on the 11-point Torino Impact Hazard scale, meaning that it's big enough — and will pass close enough — to warrant our attention, but is by no means a guaranteed hit. The numbers we're seeing now may simply represent temporary fluctuations. "No one should be concerned that the impact probability is rising. This is the behavior our team expected," Paul Chodas, director of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, told The Associated Press. "To be clear, we expect the impact probability to drop to zero at some point." The window for observing 2024 YR4 will close in April, when it flies behind the Sun. It won't reappear until 2028, at which point we'll hopefully have a far better picture of where it's going to end up. In the meantime, astronomers hope to use the James Webb Space Telescope and other powerful observatories to glean as much data on the asteroid as possible before it performs its solar disappearing act. "That will help us determine what we need to do about it, because if it's a stony asteroid, that's very different from a high proportion of iron-metal asteroid," Lewis told New Scientist. An iron-heavy asteroid would cause more damage, because it wouldn't break apart on impact, he explained. "The mass makes a huge difference in terms of the energy and whether or not the atmosphere has an effect on it." More on space rocks: Video Shows Meteorite Smashing Ground Right Where Man Had Been Standing
