Transcription
Hey everyone, geophysicist Burns here. We have a big problem in space. Something that's been talked about for many years, even decades, seems to finally be coming true. And this is the Kessler effect, where you have this runaway chain reaction with space debris, creating more and more to the point that it actually leaves entire orbits completely unusable due to the risk of a space debris impact. Remember, these tiny objects, and sometimes larger objects, in space are traveling at hypersonic velocities. So, a small particle or a small ball bearing or something can create a huge impact on something like a satellite or maybe, let's say, a spacecraft containing humans.
There's been a huge increase in space launches since 2020. We are now approaching 10,000 operational Starlink satellites, and there have been nearly 1,000 that have burned up in orbit, and this creates aluminum oxide dust in the meteorite ablation layer. Now, the satellite ablation layer, there's actually more aluminum oxide and metallic particles being generated by these satellite re-entries than there are through natural micrometeorite processes. And as this settles down from the mesosphere to the stratosphere, it degrades ozone. So, we have the Kessler effect starting to ramp up and go exponential. And we also have this issue with the metallic dust from the satellites eventually filtering down to the stratosphere, depleting ozone even further. And hey, what is ozone? Oh yeah. It's that super important but delicate oxygen molecule that protects life on Earth from dangerous ultraviolet radiation, which can cause double and single DNA strand breaks, mutations, cancer, all the things that you basically don't want. So, we have this all happening right now. I'm going to break it down for you. Look at all the data so you can understand exactly what is happening and the science behind it.
Now, before we get into examining the recent data, I just want you to get your eyes on what is happening when a satellite ablates into the upper atmosphere. This is a typical satellite component, and they place it within a plasma wind tunnel. So, this is being blasted by plasma, which is what's going to happen if this fragment or satellite or piece, whatever, rains down into the Earth due to it now losing its orbit and gravity pulling it down. And well, you see that it just completely vaporizes like this. The aluminum gets stripped away, plastic, whatever gets burned off. And so, this is effectively happening every single day with at least one to two Starlink satellites. Just last year, the daily rate was actually 5 to 8 Starlinks per day. Seems to have gone down in 2025, but that could go back up again as they keep increasing the launches. And of course, there's other satellites that are ablating, space junk, and more. And this deposits a ton of metallic particles in the mesosphere, which eventually works down to the stratosphere. And so, this is a very big problem, as you can see.
Also, in space, the particles that don't ablate down, but the space debris that remains in orbit can create huge impacts, even though they're quite tiny, as you can see here with this test image. So, this is a pretty big problem, not only for us geophysically on the planet due to the degradation of the ozone layer, but also for future space missions, for anybody that needs to fly out to, let's say, the Moon. They're going to have to pass through these different orbital layers that are completely filled with junk that could jeopardize the mission in the first place and cause the destruction of the spacecraft and even potentially loss of human life.
Here we have a visualization tool which allows us to see our nearby space environment. This is satellitemap.space. This is linked in the video description, as well as all the research papers used to make this video. I recommend you read them yourself or load them into like NotebookLM or something to listen to that podcast that's generated. So, here we see a bunch of satellites. We have the geostynchronous satellites there at 5.6 Earth radii. They rotate with the Earth to keep a fixed position and be able to look at a specific spot. Uh, those are often, uh, like government satellites and more. Most of these here now are commercial, and most of them are actually Starlink, all in low Earth orbit, and you'll notice that they're just really close to the planet. And this is where if they fail, they basically immediately enter into the atmosphere, break up, ablate, and create some of these problems that we've been discussing. So, a tremendous amount of satellites in space, tens of thousands. And we can turn on here our debris. We see that there's already a tremendous amount of debris in space. These are some small particles, but often they're quite large. A centimeter, 5 centimeters, 10 centimeters across. So, that has an impact on something at a ballistic trajectory like supersonic. That's going to create some problems. And there's really no way to get rid of these small fragments. That's the thing. It's not easy to collect junk in space. It's basically never been done. And I mean, maybe in the future, we have some sort of technology, but we're just using this like a, uh, dumping ground, and we have no real way of cleaning this up. So, this is starting to have this exponential runaway effect to it, which is really not good, uh, because it's going to leave some parts of space completely unusable, and it's probably just not good for the planet in general, geophysically, and more.
We can look at different constellations. Starlink is the biggest. We see most of the, uh, satellites here in low Earth orbit, and we can look specifically at the data for Starlink. We see that we are getting close to 10,000 operational Starlink satellites. So, we're at 9,600 plus right now at this moment in time. And if we go to our decays, we see that they've been going up quite a bit. So, a huge burst, uh, at the end of 2024, beginning of 2025, as you can see. And then you'll notice that we're still getting like two, three decays every single day. And we've actually just passed 1,000. So, we've had a thousand Starlink decays, and each one of those satellites weighs about 250 kg. So, it's depositing now more aluminum and other metallic particles and such into the mesosphere than natural processes. And this is expected to only increase because the expected lifetime of a Starlink is about 5 years. And a lot of them have proven to have a shorter lifetime than that. For example, if there's a big solar storm impact and a geomagnetic storm, that can cause these Starlinks to not only fail, but also the increased drag on them can cause them to then lose their orbital position and ablate into the atmosphere. So, these are all made to be disposable. And they're going to continuously replenish some once they get to a constellation size that's big enough. And maybe 10,000's big enough, but I think they're shooting for like 20, 30, 40,000 of these to really have crazy coverage. And it's already creating tons of problems for astronomers because these Starlinks are very, very bright. There's a ton of issues created from this. But the amount of decays of these Starlink, uh, Starlinks is going up and up, and then that's not including any of the other mega constellations that exist. A ton of companies in the United States want to create their own mega constellations. Uh, there's different groups in Europe and Asia that want to create mega constellations and are doing it already. So, there's going to be dozens of different companies, groups, organizations, governments, and more that want to have their own that will consist of thousands of satellites. So, we're looking at the beginning of an exponential growth rate right now in satellites. And that necessarily then leads to an increase in space debris.
Now, what I'm describing here with the ablation of these satellites turning into metallic dust that then interacts with the atmosphere and the ozone layer is not some thought experiment. This is verifiable. So, this is something that we need a lot more data on, but we do have hard data showing that this is an effect, and we have some ideas as to how long it's going to take some of these mesospheric aluminum oxide particles and other metallic particles and more to reach down to the ozone layer. It's expected to be about a 30-year transit time. So, we're probably going to be building up this reservoir of material that will then hit the ozone, and will probably be a process that we really can't control at that point. Because if we're already seeing this much material outpacing natural sources of, for example, meteorite ablation, then imagine 30 years from now when this finally starts to hit the stratosphere and the ozone layer. So, we already have these sort of particles and gas and vapor from meteorite ablation up in the mesosphere, but also we are getting this from satellites, not only post-launch rocket stages, which are big pieces and those even rain down as discussed, but also satellites. This creates metal vapor, smoke particles, toxic particles, all the stuff that you don't want to breathe in, right? It circulates globally as a result of its, uh, its height in the atmosphere, and eventually this settles down into the stratosphere where sulfuric acid particles will continue to ablate the, uh, re-entry metals, and then that makes them reactive. So, they start to catalyze chlorine, which then breaks down ozone. So, it's this multi-step process, and the injection of tons and tons and tons of aluminum oxide into these parts of Earth's atmosphere is going to have unintended consequences. It already is, but it's also going to go far and beyond what we currently understand. That much, I can guarantee you.
Here we have our first data graphic of many that I'm going to be showing you from a recent report released by the European Space Agency. All this data goes up till the end of 2024. Here we are seeing all the objects in orbit. So, we have payloads, and then also debris and payload mission-related objects and unidentified objects and more. So, we see that the majority here are payloads. But there's also a lot of other things, and also a lot of unidentified objects now in orbit, debris, and more. So, back at the beginning of the space age, of course, it was zero, and then we see how it ramped up, and it was steady growth until 2010, where things definitely took an increase upwards. But now, look at how it's been going exponential in the 2020s, and that's likely to go parabolic in the next 5 years. And in fact, it already is, and we can see that with this data here.
So, here we see the object count, the object mass, and the object area in low Earth orbit, same time frame. So, we see that the count number is starting to go up exponentially. We see that the mass is even more so. Look at the area, though. It's going up like crazy. And that is really the key for the Kessler effect to take hold, because there just needs to be a certain density of items and debris and junk and everything in these orbits for them to really increase their rate of collision, creating more, and then that just takes over, and these orbits become unusable. So, the mass is certainly increasing dramatically as a result of all these new payloads to low Earth orbit, primarily Starlink. The actual amount of satellites and more, obviously, is going up with each delivery. Though there are decays that occur, but the area, just the overall like surface area, the density of these things is going exponential right now, which is insane.
And here we can see the payloads to low Earth orbit by mass. You see that there are various waves here that occurred across these different use cases. So, a lot of imaging tech was put in in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Then there's a lot of spaceships that were launched that were going to low Earth orbit in the '90s, 2000s, 2010s. Now, it's all about communication. And the overall amount of mass going into low Earth orbit is higher now than it ever has been before. And this is going up year by year by tremendous amounts. And it's even worse if you look at the object count.
And here we have the object count for the same low Earth orbit. And so, you see that the number of objects was quite low compared to now. And you see that really how this changed starting with 2020 and the commercialization of space. And again, you can see almost all this is due to communication. And the main mega constellation that is in effect right now is Starlink, though it is not the only one, but is by far the dominant player, even the monopoly, you could say, in this field. So, a massive increase in the number of objects in space that's increased just over the past few years. This is going to go up even more, and that Kessler effect isn't going to take that long to take hold and basically run wild.
And it's not just low Earth orbit. We're also seeing this in other orbits like geostationary orbit, which is quite a bit further out. We can see the distance here in kilometers, much further out than low Earth orbit, though the trajectory is quite a bit different. So, we've had a lot of launches to geostationary orbit over time, and they are in general increasing year by year, though things have cooled off a little bit since the late 2010s, but the overall amount is going up. This is very precious orbital real estate. Geostationary is a very useful, uh, place to capture data and communicate and and more. There's a lot of purposes here: civilian, defense, and commercial. You see that the commercial use case really exploded in the early 21st century. We're getting a lot of civil and defense recently. So, it's not going exponential like low Earth orbit, but certainly, there is this huge increase in the number of objects in geostationary orbit, the area, and then also what we're seeing here, the mass of these objects.
And lastly, we can look at the estimated number of objects that are re-entering every single year. So, here we see our count going up to 3,000. And again, this goes back to the late 1950s. We see that the numbers here were hovering around 500. They did spike up to 1,000 there right before 1990. But effectively, we were in this range the entire time for like 40 years, 50 years. And look at what happened after 2020. Now, the past three years, this is 2024, 2023, 2022. Massive increase in the number of objects that are re-entering across all these different categories. So, some of them are payloads, a lot of it is debris, but we're going from about 500 maximum. That's effectively the upper bound of this range. Now, we're consistently hitting 2,000 or more objects re-entering year by year.
So, something you may be wondering is, when these objects re-enter our atmosphere, what happens to them? Where do they go? Well, it's primarily in the mesosphere, which goes from about 50 km to 70 km up. And this is the ablation layer of the atmosphere. And so, when meteorites fly in, this is where they burn up, unless they're really large. And this is also where satellites will burn up. They typically aren't that large. 250 kgs is about the weight of a Starlink satellite, for example. So, they'll burn up in the mesosphere. And a lot of this material will eventually condense down to the bottom of the mesosphere, the top of the stratosphere. And it's going to take decades, we estimate, for a lot of that to filter down into the stratosphere and eventually start interacting with ozone, causing the degradation of ozone to rapidly go up due to some complex chemical reactions, catalytic reactions involving chlorine and and and more. So, we already are seeing that the amount of material being deposited into this ablation layer is 30% greater than through natural sources, micrometeorites and more in 2022. That's only going to continue to increase. And we expect that the artificial amount of re-entry material into the ablation layer to be about 500% greater than natural sources in the very near future.
So, how this affects the geophysics and the geology of the planet is a big unknown. The first thing that's been identified is that it's going to be interacting with the ozone layer, which protects us from dangerous ultraviolet light. That there could be a lot of other downstream effects that we simply just don't know yet, because we need to observe them to kind of get clued in. But this is already creating problems. And what we see is that about one-third of the aluminum in a satellite gets oxidized. So, a lot of it just gets totally vaporized. Some of it rains down. One-third of it gets oxidized and turns into Al2O3, which is quite stable. And that is what will form in this layer and eventually cause, and is already causing, some of these problems that we've discussed in this video.
So, you may be thinking to yourself, "Oh, well, this isn't a problem. It hasn't happened yet." Already, based off of the 1,000 Starlink satellite decays that have occurred, this has deposited about 600 tons of aluminum oxide into the mesosphere. Of course, there's other satellites, other debris that is raining down. Adding to this, you have the Kessler effect in action, really starting to ramp up as this space debris starts to interact with functional satellites and more debris, creating more particles, more junk, and that runaway effect could get really dangerous, especially as we start to send more and more people to space, exploring the Moon, Mars, our local solar system. It's going to be a problem. It's already a problem.
So, that is the update for you. I wanted to fill you in on that because we hit that critical 1,000 Starlink decay threshold just in the past day or two, and we nearly have 10,000 Starlinks now in orbit that are functional. Of course, there are tens of thousands of objects in general in space that have been launched over the decades, and the amount of debris is really uncountable. We don't know how much debris exists up there. It's not like we have an AirTag on every single one. So, when this runaway effect occurs, probably it's going to take us a bit by surprise, but it is already starting to happen at this moment in time.
So, thank you all so much for watching. I've been your host, Stefan Burns. Smash that thumbs up button. Help this channel grow. If you liked what we were chatting about, then please subscribe. We discuss what's happening on the Earth energetically. So, we look at earthquakes, volcanoes, geomagnetic storms, severe weather, solar flares, solar activity, planetary alignments or resonances, comets, interstellar forces, cosmic events, and things like this. Things that actually affect us. That is what I discuss. I release videos almost daily. I hope to see you around. Wishing each and every single one of you well. Hopefully, we're not all breathing in aluminum oxide dust in the near future, but it looks like we are going to be increasingly polluting our atmosphere as a result of this in a way that you can't escape it because it is global. So, make sure you enjoy the fresh air while you can. I'll see you all in the next video.