This New Statistic on Kessler Syndrome Will Give Anyone Who Cares About Space Travel an Instantaneous Stress Headache

This New Statistic on Kessler Syndrome Will Give Anyone Who Cares About Space Travel an Instantaneous Stress Headache

In 1978, NASA researcher Donald Kessler and his colleagues published a paper titled “Collision frequency of artificial satellites: The creation of a debris belt.” The paper laid down a grim warning: a single collision between satellites that would escalate into a series of followup accidents, “each of which would increase the probability of further collisions, leading to the growth of a belt of debris around the Earth.” “Under certain conditions…