Space race

The space age is having a comeback. After more than sixty years of rocket launches, there are now over 11,000 satellites in Earth’s orbit. While 30% of these are inactive, the pace of new deployments is accelerating the base of active units. After a record year of successful launches, nearly 2,500 satellites were deployed in 2022 alone. Where the early space race was contested by nations, today’s space age is led by commercial interests. To facilitate reduced latency of data transmissions, the majority of launch activity centers on Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites that have an altitude of 2,000 kilometers or less. Notably, of the roughly 4,500 operational LEO satellites weighing at least 100 kilograms, 3,300 of those are owned by a single private entity, the communications company Starlink.