Satellites that are placed in orbit around the Earth will now have to be cleaned up earlier. When their mission is completed and their work is done, they will be allowed to fly for another five years at most. The former limit was 25 years. The new rule should prevent space debris from accumulating.
The U.S. communications regulator, the FCC, passed the rule on Thursday. Companies that request permission from the organization for a launch must already indicate in their application how long the mission will last and when the satellite will perish.
The rule applies to satellites in low orbit, the low Earth orbit (LEO). They fly lower than 2,000 kilometers above the Earth. Here are mainly communication satellites. For example, space company SpaceX is working on Starlink, a large network of thousands of satellites for global broadband internet.
Thousands of satellites and many more debris and remnants revolve around our planet. To stay in their orbit, they must be traveling at about 25,000 kilometers per hour. The more space debris there is, the greater the chance of collisions and the creation of even more debris. That could also be dangerous for the crew of the space station ISS. Astronomers also complain that they can hardly study the starry sky with their telescopes because of the many artificial satellites that fly over.
Satellites can be cleaned up by slowing them down and pushing them down. Then they can be grabbed by gravity and burn up in the atmosphere.
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