Large structures containing hundreds of square meters of solar arrays will be immediately damaged by small fragments of space debris and meteorites, which will degrade the performance of their solar panels over time and create more debris in orbit. Greg Viall, founder of orbital recycling startup Lunexus Space, explained that operating a million satellites in low Earth orbit, a region of space at altitudes up to 2,000 kilometers, may be impossible to do safely unless all the satellites in that region are part of the same network so they can communicate effectively as they move around each other. MIT Technology Review.
“You can fit about four to five thousand satellites in one orbital shell,” Viall says. “If you counted all the spheres in low Earth orbit, you would get a maximum of 240,000 satellites.”
He says spacecraft must be able to pass each other at a safe distance to avoid collisions.
He added, “You also need to be able to get stuff up to higher orbits and back up to de-orbit.” “So to do this safely you have to have at least 10 kilometers of separation between satellites. Mega-constellations like Starlink can be packed more tightly because the satellites communicate with each other. But you can’t have a million satellites around the Earth unless it’s a monopoly.”
Additionally, Starlink will likely want to regularly upgrade its orbiting data centers with more modern technology. According to a group of astronomers who filed objections against SpaceX’s FCC application, replacing perhaps a million satellites every five years would mean even more orbital traffic — and could increase the rate of debris re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere from about three or four pieces per day to about one every three minutes. Some scientists are concerned that re-entry of debris could damage the ozone layer and alter Earth’s thermal balance.
Affordable launch and assembly
The longer the hardware survives in orbit, the better the return on investment. But for orbital data centers to make economic sense, companies will have to find a relatively inexpensive way to get that hardware into orbit. SpaceX is betting on its upcoming Starship mega-rocket to be able to carry six times more payload than the current workhorse Falcon 9. The Thales Alenia Space study concluded that if Europe were to build its own orbital data centers, it would have to develop an equally powerful launcher.
But launch is only part of the equation. A massive orbital data center won’t fit in a rocket – even a mega-rocket. It will need to be assembled in the classroom. And it will likely require advanced robotic systems that do not yet exist. various companies Earth-based tests have been conducted with Precursors of such systems, But they are still far from real-world use.
