A Start-Up Is Monitoring Space Junk to Enable a More Sustainable Space Economy
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Ripcord Inc. founder Alex Fielding’s company Privateer tracks the objects congesting our orbit to minimize future collisions.
By Jack Meyer
October 28, 2022
8 minute read
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In February 2009, some 500 miles above the Siberian tundra, a defunct Russian satellite and a U.S. communication satellite collided with massive force and shattered to pieces. Circulating low Earth orbit at speeds north of 20,000 miles per hour, the two instantly broke into thousands of fragments of aluminum and titanium space junk. Of these bits of debris hurtling at hypervelocity, only a fraction of them were large enough to be accurately tracked. And of those roughly 2,000 fragments that have been tracked, they’ll continue circulating for anywhere from 20 to a hundred years or more from the time of impact.
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