Comment on How come all the crap like satellites that we put into space...it never hits a rocket or the ISS?
Nighed@feddit.uk 1 week ago
Space is big, unbelievably big.
Low earth orbit is roughly 600 km to 800 km in altitude.
GPS satellites are at about 20,000 km in altitude.
Geostationary orbit is 35,000 km up.
The international space station is at roughly 420km altitude, travels at 27,600 km/h, yet takes 93 minutes to orbit the earth once.
Space is just big.
I’m addition, we track objects in orbit, this site says we track over 45,000 items larger than 10cm in size, with there being over a million larger than a centimetre. Satilites often have to move to avoid known debris and have outer shells that can absorb smaller impacts (the ISS has armour!)
The biggest causes of debris has been countries testing out anti satilite missiles.
Source for most numbers
Rhaedas@fedia.io 1 week ago
The extra protection on things like the ISS is for more than just man made debris. The Earth is a big gravity well, constantly pulling in and running into things in space. That's what meteors are, usually small specks of rocks, and the Earth's atmosphere is like a windshield being driven in rain or snow (or bugs, but that doesn't happen as much anymore :( ).