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Are Mega-Constellations Sleepwalking Low Earth Orbit into Runaway Chaos?


It seems the overwhelming majority of the time when we write about satellite megaconstellations, it’s as a warning. That’s not because they aren’t useful, but because they hold the potential to completely destroy our access to space if not managed properly, and possibly cause a whole bunch of Earth-based devastation as well. So it probably won’t come as a surprise when there is yet another paper from a leading expert on space debris pointing out the potential hazards of the latest crop of satellite megaconstellations - which is exactly what a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv by Hugh G. Lewis of the University of Birmingham, does.

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