It's time for my (seemingly monthly) look at conjunctions involving #Starlink satellites, as predicted by celestrak.com/SOCRATES/. In this month's update I have corrected an error in the conjunction rates for June, July & August (I missed some conjunctions) (1/n) #SpaceSafety
In the SOCRATES report from 30 September 2020, with just over 680 #Starlink satellites in orbit (v0.9 & v1.0), there were 6957 conjunctions < 5 km involving at least one #Starlink satellite (17.7% of all conjunctions in the SOCRATES report) for the 7 days ahead) (2/n)
The number of conjunctions < 5 km involving a #Starlink satellite & something else (i.e. not Starlink) over the 7-day period was 2828 (7.2% of all conjunctions in the SOCRATES report) (3/n)
SOCRATES currently assesses more than 5700 primaries & more than 19300 secondaries. #Starlink represents approx. 12% of all primaries and 3.5% of all secondaries, but accounts for 1 in every 5.7 conjunctions reported by SOCRATES (4/n)
While the #Starlink constellation is growing linearly, the daily < 5 km conjunction rate for Starlink satellites is growing exponentially, whether Starlink-on-Starlink conjunctions are considered or not (5/n)
The same is true for #Starlink < 1 km conjunction rate, although these rates remain much lower than for miss distances up to 5 km. Nonetheless, miss distances of < 1 km tend to trigger conjunction warnings from @18SPCS & add to the burdens of operators (6/n)
In summary, it is likely that #Starlink satellites are currently experiencing an average of 400 conjunctions < 5 km and 15 conjunctions < 1 km with other (non-Starlink) objects in orbit *every day* (7/7)
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.