Humanity invests a lot in satellites, and not just in terms of money. Yes, the most expensive satellites can cost close to a billion dollars, but the greater investment comes from our reliance on this orbital technology. Television broadcasts, navigation systems, weather forecasts and many forms of financial transactions all rely on satellites. If all the satellites on Earth suddenly shut down, international communications systems would begin to malfunction, traffic would come to a standstill, clocks would become desynchronized, and global supply chains would collapse. It’s a scene fit for a disaster movie, but unfortunately it’s also a very real danger. All it takes is a solar storm or a software glitch to destroy all satellites within a week.
The number of satellites in orbit has grown exponentially, especially since the launch of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. As of January 2026, there are approximately 15,000 satellites in orbit, approximately two-thirds of which are Starlink satellites. As the space around Earth becomes increasingly crowded, satellites need to maneuver more and more frequently to avoid collisions with each other. Currently, only SpaceX conducts collision avoidance drills every two minutes. However, if SpaceX or any other satellite operator loses contact with their technology due to something like a solar storm or software glitch, they won’t be able to perform the necessary avoidance. This could set off a domino-like series of crashes that could destroy all of Earth’s satellites in just a few days.
Read more: How NASA plans to deorbit the International Space Station
A scientific attempt to measure the risk of satellite collisions
Satellite dish array at night – Bjdlzx/Getty Images
Scientists have expressed concern about this risk since the first satellites were launched at the height of the space race. In 1978, NASA researcher Donald Kessler published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research warning of the rising risk of satellites colliding with each other and creating debris belts around Earth, hampering our access to space. This in turn gave rise to the term “Kessler Syndrome,” a vaguely defined scenario in which low-Earth orbit becomes so crowded that one collision triggers another, and so on. Lose a satellite…lose them all.
Kessler created mathematical models to demonstrate this risk, but apparently, that hasn’t stopped companies from building more and more satellites. In light of the new reality, Princeton University graduate student Sarah Thiele and her colleagues designed a new way to measure risk, called the Collision Realization and Significant Harm (CRASH) clock. Collision clocks use satellite position data to estimate the time it would take for a catastrophic collision between satellites to occur if the ability to perform evasive maneuvers was lost. As of this writing, the crash clock is only 5.5 days. Satellite engineers needed less than a week to avert disaster. Even more frightening is how quickly the risk spreads. In 2018, before the launch of the Starlink satellite megaconstellation, the CRASH Clock was 164 days.
Past accidents serve as warning
Illustration of low-Earth orbit crowded with satellites – CGD Shahidul/Shutterstock
The collision clock is perhaps the clearest warning yet of how quickly we are approaching a Kessler Syndrome scenario. In less than ten years, the time has shrunk from five and a half months to just five and a half days, a chilling increase in danger. The risks aren’t just hypothetical, either. An increasing number of real collisions and disruptions are exposing the vulnerability of our satellite systems. Research shows that solar storms have disrupted some satellites, increasing the drag they experience in their orbits. This does not bode well for the possibility of super-strong solar storms, for which there is precedent.
On May 19, 1998, the Galaxy IV communications satellite failed after experiencing a period of intense solar flare. The loss of the satellite disabled 80-90% of pagers on the North American continent. It was the late 1990s, and pagers were all the rage, especially in the medical field, where doctors and nurses relied on them to make emergency calls. Suddenly, those key medical professionals were unreachable. Meanwhile, NPR, CBS and China Television Network lost their signals. Fortunately, services were able to reconnect via other satellites, but that was nearly 30 years ago, and space is far less crowded. If the same event happened today, Galaxy IV would not only go out, but it would probably crash into an adjacent satellite, causing everything to collapse like a house of cards.
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