The space junk doomsday scenario is getting closer

The sky above our heads is about to get way more cluttered with space junk than it already is

increasing risk of collisions, atmospheric contamination, and a runaway doomsday scenario called Kessler Syndrome that could put humanity's ability to operate in space at risk. Elon Musk

just got the green light to double the number of Starlink satellites currently in orbit

and to have them operate closer to Earth than ever before. He's even started pushing the idea

of building AI data centers in space, and he's not the only one coveting the real estate above our

heads. As their numbers increase, satellites have to take special maneuvers to avoid possible

collisions more frequently, like a giant game of Frogger with extremely high stakes, since all it

takes is one small piece of space junk traveling tens of thousands of miles per hour to cause

severe damage to critical space infrastructure, a scenario vividly depicted in the 2013 film Gravity

So how and why is this happening? How bad is it really? And what can be done about it

I spoke to CNET reporter Joe Supan, who's been covering Starlink for years, to find out

Five six years ago there were only a couple thousand satellites in space total And now Starlink just got approved for a total of 15 more The approval from Trump FCC is a major win for Musk but still only about half the total

number of satellites SpaceX had requested. Starlink aims to provide a wireless internet

option for underserved communities where it isn't economically feasible to run cables

and the recent approval also included the green light to bring its satellites down to an even

lower orbit. Putting their satellites in low Earth orbit was really Starlink's great innovation

Satellite internet has been around forever, but it's generally been really slow

The latency has been really bad. By moving them closer to Earth, it really cut out those problems

You could really have modern broadband speeds through satellite internet. Bringing these satellites even lower is a trade-off that may improve some of the latency issues Starlink users have experienced

while also making the satellites more vulnerable to damage from solar storms

When these satellites do have issues or reach the end of their working life, they're designed to burn up in the atmosphere

a process with an environmental impact that's raising concerns about air pollution, global warming, and impacts to the ozone layer

There are currently about 40 objects in space being tracked by space agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency But there estimated to be over a million much smaller objects that aren being tracked capable of causing catastrophic damage due to the high speeds at which they are moving

Starlink also isn't the only actor that's moving thousands more satellites into low Earth orbit

Competition between corporations and countries has many others worried that they need to act now

or miss out on the opportunity to claim their spot in this increasingly crowded space

It's really turned into a geopolitical tool, I think, especially you see it in Ukraine or Iran or Russia

Starlink has great control over whether these areas get internet. So I think these countries are now saying, well, why are we relying on this company to do this

We need our own LEO satellites. We're already seeing the effects of this increasing density of material in low Earth orbit

The threat to aircraft from space junk is increasing, and satellites currently in operation are having to perform

more frequent evasive maneuvers to prevent collisions. Since I published a month ago

FCC gave Amazon approval for 4,500 satellites. Another company called Logos got approval for 4 And that just US That just like where the FCC has control Globally China filed for 200 satellites Each collision creates more debris creating

greater risk of even more collisions, which can quickly spiral into a runaway train scenario

called Kessler syndrome. Some experimental efforts to reduce space junk have been explored

including using nets to catch out of control satellites. But this is most useful for larger

debris that can be easily tracked, rather than the smaller, more dangerous stuff that can't

Elon Musk doesn't seem worried though. One of the things we'll be doing with SpaceX within a few years is launching

solar-powered AI satellites. People in need of internet in rural areas have long had to rely on satellites to get connected

but that could be changing with the rise of HABs, high-altitude platform systems that use

helium to float up into the stratosphere, where they're designed to stay in place over a given

service area for up to a year, beaming internet directly to people's devices. Check out our special

report from inside a HAPS hangar in New Mexico right here. Are you worried about space junk or

do you think the danger is overhyped? Let us know down in the comments and subscribe for more stories

that make you say, what the future