Stuff South Africa·3 min read·medium
A new CRASH Clock measures the chance of satellite collisions, and it’s ticking down fast
T
The Conversation
✦AI Summary
The 'CRASH Clock' is a new metric tracking the time until a potential collision between satellites in low-Earth orbit, which has dropped to 2.5 days as of 2026. The increase in megaconstellations and space debris is significantly raising the risk of cascading orbital collisions.
Imagine a piece of space debris the size of a hockey puck slams into a Starlink satellite at about 10 kilometres per second. The kinetic energy is equivalent to two kilograms of TNT, or a fully-loaded semi-truck travelling at 100 kilometres an hour.
technologyscienceenvironment
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