Deep Field

Starting

Deep Field
29 September 2026 2518 stories tracked

Ku-band · 12 GHz

Satellites & Orbit

What happens between the atmosphere and deep space — satellite constellations, orbital debris and conjunctions, remote sensing, spectrum and licensing, and the policy that lags all of it.

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Stories held
20
Newest
28 Sep
Observed at
Ku-band 12 GHz
Position
9 of 11

Low Earth orbit stopped being empty about a decade ago. There are now tens of thousands of active satellites where there were hundreds, most of them in constellations flying as single systems, and the consequences reach both up and down. On the ground, connectivity has genuinely changed. In orbit, conjunction warnings are routine and the station has manoeuvred dozens of times. Astronomically, the constellations streak long-exposure images and transmit across bands radio telescopes were promised would stay quiet.

The physics underneath is unforgiving. A one-centimetre fragment at orbital velocity carries roughly the energy of a hand grenade, and there is no shielding against it that is light enough to fly. Altitude decides everything that follows: below about 600 kilometres the residual atmosphere drags a dead satellite down within a handful of years, which is why the busiest shell is also the self-cleaning one; above 800 it decays over centuries, and anything abandoned there is abandoned for longer than the industry has existed. Kessler's 1978 argument — that beyond a certain density, collisions generate debris faster than the atmosphere removes it — is not a hypothetical any more. It is a design constraint, and the deliberate anti-satellite tests of 2007 and 2021 each added thousands of trackable fragments to exactly the wrong altitudes.

What is genuinely new is that regulation has started to move. The old guidance was to clear an orbit within twenty-five years of end of life; the current US rule is five, and operators are increasingly designing for controlled reentry rather than hoping. The remaining hard problem is that orbit is a commons with no way to charge for it and no authority above the national licence. A constellation is approved by the country its operator is registered in, and the sky it crosses belongs to everybody else. Astronomy has no standing in that process at all, which is why the mitigations that exist — darkening coatings, orienting solar panels away on the way up — are voluntary, and mostly the result of astronomers asking politely.

The words this subject keeps using

The whole glossary →

The traffic overhead

Counted from the map and the schedule on this gather.

Launches queued
16

and almost all of them are going to low orbit, which is where everything already is

Launch sites mapped
23

clustered on coastlines and toward the equator, where the Earth's own rotation contributes and the debris falls in water

Ground stations mapped
8

the other half of the system, and the half nobody photographs

Closing speed in LEO
~14 km/s

two objects meeting head-on at orbital velocity, which is why a paint fleck is a hazard and a collision is a debris field

The launch sites, the ground stations and where things come down →

More on orbit

NASA ORBIT Challenge 2027

The NASA ORBIT (Opportunities in Research, Business, Innovation, and Technology for the Workforce) Challenge invites university and community college students nationwide to…

Earlier

11 more

08:00 UTC

Earth from Space: Venetian Lagoon

Image: This image of the Venetian Lagoon in northern Italy was acquired by the IRIDE satellites on 17…

ESA Earth Observation

Recent frames

The gallery →
What files a story here

This is the actual list satellites & orbit is matched on — nothing hidden and nothing inferred. A term on the top line settles it on its own; the second line counts, but needs company. A story that matches nothing here stays untagged rather than being pushed somewhere to fill a gap. How sorting works →

orbital debrisspace debrissatellite constellationearth observationgeostationarylow earth orbitspace trafficconjunction warningdeorbitspace policyspectrum allocationremote sensingsatellite operatorkessler syndromeon-orbit servicingspace forceground station

starlinkkuiperonewebsatelliteconstellationsmallsatcubesatgpstelecom satelliteimaging satellitereconnaissance satellitefcc filingitu filing