01-11-2026, 05:15 AM
A recent paper - https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09643 - estimates that if we lose control and maneuver of our LEO satellites, which could happen in a Carrington or Miyake event - we have about 2.6 days before enough things hit each other to set off a Kessler cascade.
As of now there is a "near miss" - meaning things passing within 1 kilometer of each other - once every 22 seconds. Low Earth Orbit is where the vast majority of these near-misses happen: it's an area with high orbital speeds meaning that 1km corridor has more volume per time than it would in other orbits, many active satellites capable of maneuvering, fairly robust de-orbit protocols, and enough atmosphere to cause uncontrolled junk to decay within a few years to a few decades. The vast majority of these near-misses in LEO involve at least one object capable of maneuvering to avoid collision.
But LEO is now a tightly-choreographed dance, where every satellite has to worry about the orbit of all the others and the orbits of all the uncontrolled debris, and these satellites have to maneuver fairly often. The worry is that if we lose control due to a big solar storm, the ratio of uncontrolled to controlled objects in LEO skyrockets, the dance breaks down into chaos, and the chaos spreads from there to higher orbits. When we take the other orbital regimes into account, less than half the objects bigger than 10cm are functional and capable of maneuvering, so there'd be no real chance of getting it under control again. And there's 6600 tons of junk up there.
So I invite you to imagine Earth with a fat fuzzy ring of satellite smithereens; debris sizes slowly trending downward until ultimately stabilizing as a proper disc-shaped ring where orbits are mostly circular and equatorial. Sizes reach stability at that point because in that configuration collision speeds are relatively low.
My thought is, most of these smithereens are electromagnetically conductive material, and that proposed ring cuts right across the Van Allen particle radiation belt driven by Earth's magnetic field.
Everybody has done studies on Kessler syndrome taking gravity and orbital dynamics into account, but I haven't seen 'boo' about the interaction of that possible ring with particle radiation, magnetic and electrostatic forces.
What happens to a Kessler debris ring as a result of the Van Allen belt? Is it de-stabilized and sucked down toward the poles like electrons, or repelled making it tend toward its stable disc shape faster? And what happens to the Van Allen belt as a result of having a ring full of tiny conductors swarming through it? Could we be triggering a possible Laschamps event, temporary loss of our electromagnetic atmosphere shield effect, or magnetic field excursion?
As of now there is a "near miss" - meaning things passing within 1 kilometer of each other - once every 22 seconds. Low Earth Orbit is where the vast majority of these near-misses happen: it's an area with high orbital speeds meaning that 1km corridor has more volume per time than it would in other orbits, many active satellites capable of maneuvering, fairly robust de-orbit protocols, and enough atmosphere to cause uncontrolled junk to decay within a few years to a few decades. The vast majority of these near-misses in LEO involve at least one object capable of maneuvering to avoid collision.
But LEO is now a tightly-choreographed dance, where every satellite has to worry about the orbit of all the others and the orbits of all the uncontrolled debris, and these satellites have to maneuver fairly often. The worry is that if we lose control due to a big solar storm, the ratio of uncontrolled to controlled objects in LEO skyrockets, the dance breaks down into chaos, and the chaos spreads from there to higher orbits. When we take the other orbital regimes into account, less than half the objects bigger than 10cm are functional and capable of maneuvering, so there'd be no real chance of getting it under control again. And there's 6600 tons of junk up there.
So I invite you to imagine Earth with a fat fuzzy ring of satellite smithereens; debris sizes slowly trending downward until ultimately stabilizing as a proper disc-shaped ring where orbits are mostly circular and equatorial. Sizes reach stability at that point because in that configuration collision speeds are relatively low.
My thought is, most of these smithereens are electromagnetically conductive material, and that proposed ring cuts right across the Van Allen particle radiation belt driven by Earth's magnetic field.
Everybody has done studies on Kessler syndrome taking gravity and orbital dynamics into account, but I haven't seen 'boo' about the interaction of that possible ring with particle radiation, magnetic and electrostatic forces.
What happens to a Kessler debris ring as a result of the Van Allen belt? Is it de-stabilized and sucked down toward the poles like electrons, or repelled making it tend toward its stable disc shape faster? And what happens to the Van Allen belt as a result of having a ring full of tiny conductors swarming through it? Could we be triggering a possible Laschamps event, temporary loss of our electromagnetic atmosphere shield effect, or magnetic field excursion?