May 1, 2020

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Satellites in Low Orbits Are Taking over the Skies

Earth monitoring and high-speed Internet are driving demand

By Mark Fischetti & Nadieh Bremer

Nadieh Bremer; Source: Jonathan McDowell’s Space Report, 2019

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For decades the number of satellites orbiting Earth rose at a gentle pace, but growth has soared recently. By July 2019 more than 2,200 satellites were aloft. In the 1980s and 1990s the action was in geosynchronous orbit (blues), says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics|Harvard & Smithsonian. But now the action is in the lowest Earth orbits (yellows), he says, and increasingly dominated by young companies rather than government, military or academic owners. Today the push is from Starlink—constellations of satellites weighing 260 kilograms, being launched by SpaceX to deliver high-speed Internet.

The uptick started around 2014, stemming largely from CubeSats—diminutive satellites, each lighter than 12 kilograms, that were lofted in groups. They are fulfilling a desire to observe changes on Earth every day. CubeSats could reveal, for example, how people were moving around Wuhan, China, during the coronavirus outbreak. And instead of Google Earth showing driveways with cars from 10 years ago, it could display vehicles purchased last week.

Credit: Nadieh Bremer; Source: Jonathan McDowell’s Space Report, 2019

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Mark Fischetti was a senior editor at Scientific American for nearly 20 years and covered sustainability issues, including climate, environment, energy, and more. He assigned and edited feature articles and news by journalists and scientists and also wrote in those formats. He was founding managing editor of two spin-off magazines: Scientific American Mind and Scientific American Earth 3.0. His 2001 article “Drowning New Orleans” predicted the widespread disaster that a storm like Hurricane Katrina would impose on the city. Fischetti has written as a freelancer for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian and many other outlets. He co-authored the book Weaving the Web with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, which tells the real story of how the Web was created. He also co-authored The New Killer Diseases with microbiologist Elinor Levy. Fischetti has a physics degree and has twice served as Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture at Centenary College of Louisiana, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2021 he received the American Geophysical Union’s Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism. He has appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN, the History Channel, NPR News and many radio stations.

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Scientific American Magazine Vol 322 Issue 5This article was published with the title “Satellite Surge” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 322 No. 5 (), p. 74
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0520-74
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