In 2024, more rockets launched into space than ever… but a serious danger lurks

We have definitively entered a new space era in 2024, the year of the absolute record for orbital launches with 263 successful launches.

USA and SpaceX Falcon 9 far ahead of the competition, Europe at the bottom of the class

According to the specialized site Space Statshere is how these rocket launches are distributed by country:

• United States: 158
• China: 68
• Russia: 17
• Japan: 7
• India: 5
• Iran: 4
• Europe: 3
• North Korea: 1

Unsurprisingly, the most used launcher in the world is SpaceX's Falcon 9 with a whopping 132 launches, far ahead of the Soyuz 2 and its 17 launches. Europe is barely doing better than North Korea, but the arrival on the aerospace market of Ariane 6 should allow it to regain some color.

The map of the shooting sites is also quite telling. If the United States is well ahead, we observe that the geographical center has moved towards Asia.

This is not a rhetorical question or a gratuitous doom and gloom address. Effectively, Kessler syndrome was theorized in 1978 at NASA. It shows how a simple chain reaction of space debris could completely deprive us of low and high orbits, or even all of space. Here's a map — not to scale, of course — showing these rings of debris.

Kessler syndrome simply illustrates a different type of pollution than that we experience on Earth: the quantity of our waste becomes problematic even in space. Currently, depending on the orbits chosen, there is approximately a 1% probability that a satellite will be struck by space debris.

Knowing that Cnes counted 7,500 active in 2023, this is not negligible! Furthermore, not all orbits are equally crowded: low orbit (LEO) is clearly more crowded, but it is also where the atmosphere is most effective at destroying small elements. Thus, between 800 km and 1200 km, this is where the chain reaction would be most likely to occur. When we think about the number of shots needed for the Artemis program or a hypothetical Martian conquest, Elon Musk could quickly lose sleep…

Spacecraft destruction events in orbit are more common than we might think. For example, last year Boeing saw one of its Eutelsat satellites explodeChina deliberately destroyed one in 2007 and India also in 2019. However, all of these acts generate quantities of debris. It is even possible that there are “killer satellites” like Cosmos 2499because the ability of a nation to get rid of a spy satellite or one that has become annoying is crucial. Geopolitical news is trying to convince us of this…

To finish on a slightly lighter touch, nevertheless potentially contributing to Kessler syndrome: did you know that astronauts have lost several objects in space. This ranges from Ed White's glove to cameras, toothbrushes, tools, etc. An entire spacesuit (Orlan) was even sent into orbit for a resistance test!