Do satellites stay in space forever?

A satellite has a useful lifetime of between 5 and 15 years depending on the satellite. It’s hard to design them to last much longer than that, either because the solar arrays stop working or because they run out of fuel to allow them to maintain the orbit that they’re supposed to be in.

Do satellites get destroyed?

The ISS has to carry out collision avoidance manoeuvres to avoid getting damaged by space junk. Fortunately, collisions are rare: a Chinese satellite broke up in March 2021 after a collision. Before that, the last satellite to collide and be destroyed by space junk was in 2009.

Did China shoot down a satellite?

When China destroyed one of its retired weather satellites in 2007, it created more than 2,000 pieces of trackable debris. This material posed an ongoing hazard to operational space missions, not least those of China itself.

How long does it take space debris to fall to Earth?

Debris left in orbits below 600 km normally fall back to Earth within several years. At altitudes of 800 km, the time for orbital decay is often measured in decades. Above 1,000 km, orbital debris will normally continue circling the Earth for a century or more.

Why don’t satellites just fall back to Earth?

The second choice is to send the satellite even farther away from Earth. It can take a lot of fuel for a satellite to slow down enough to fall back into the atmosphere. That is especially true if a satellite is in a very high orbit. For many of these high satellites, it takes less fuel to blast it farther into space than to send it back to Earth.

What happens to satellites when they reach the end of orbit?

These days there are two choices, depending on how high the satellite is. For the closer satellites, engineers will use its last bit of fuel to slow it down. That way, it will fall out of orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.

How long do satellites last?

Further satellites are instead sent even farther away from Earth. Like every other machine, satellites do not last forever.

How can we prevent a satellite from crashing into Earth?

The second choice is to send the satellite even farther away from Earth. It can take a lot of fuel for a satellite to slow down enough to fall back into the atmosphere. That is especially true if a satellite is in a very high orbit.