How many Satellites are there in Space?
Thursday, February 16th, 2012Recently, I have been assisting a Math Teacher at Yongmoon High School to teach a Math Class in English. Our 11 students have a unique chance to engage in content-based learning, essentially studying two subjects at the same time. I’m not particularly skilled at Math, so this class has been a great opportunity for me to review and learn new things.
One particular problem that a student presented to us was about satellites. When listening to his presentation, I wrote down questions that popped into my head. My questions were: How many satellites are there currently in space? Where do they come from? Do they drift or remain motionless? Are they ever damaged by asteroids? The image of WALL-E crashing through a wall of old satellites also came to mind. I searched for the answers online later. This is what I discovered:
Satellites orbit the Earth (I guess that may fairly obvious to most people). They range in all different sizes, with the smallest ones costing a few million dollars, while the heavy ones cost tens of millions. Throughout history, there have been about 24,500 man-made objects launched into space. Among those, about 8,000 were satellites. The majority were incinerated when rentering the Earth’s atmosphere, while others fell into unstable orbits. Another source told me that there are about 3,000 satellites currently in orbit, with only about 1,000 still active. Satellites typically have a lifespan of 5-20 years. Russia and the former USSR have launched about 1,400, while the USA has launched about 1,000. (Other countries include Japan: 100, China: 80, Canada: 25, and South Korea: 10). Their purposes range from monitoring weather patterns to possibly being able to destroy other satellites in an event of international war. (The demon of fear is always out there). But what I find fascinating is that most of us have never seen a satellite in person, yet we now depend on them every day with our smart phones, web usage, TV broadcasting, and weather forecasts.
Sometimes I think people are like satellites. People expect us to follow a certain path, but sometimes we lose our path or change directions or simply stop moving. But unlike satellites, we have the potential to be found again. It is ironic that we connect with people far away from us by using machines which are even further away, drifting through Space on their own.
