Mysterious light spots appear in the Indian sky: like a "air train", densely packed, what is it?
What would it feel like if we suddenly saw dense and mysterious light spots appear in the night sky, and they were connected in a line, like a "sky train" flying through the sky? Uninformed friends may think that alien spaceships are coming. Fireballs and meteor showers appear in the sky from time to time. The question is, will there really be some neatly arranged mysterious spots of light in the sky? This may not have happened a long time ago, but now more and more people are seeing such a scene. Mysterious spot of light in the Indian sky
The incident occurred in Lucknow and Uttar Pradesh, India, and many people witnessed the sudden A series of mysterious light spots appeared, and these mysterious light spots were densely connected into lines, and they seemed to be still sparkling when they flew past. Seeing this scene, Indian netizens described it as a "sky train", like a train passing through the night sky, and those mysterious light spots were like the light shining from the train windows. Of course, "sky train" is just an adjective, and it does not mean that a train appears in the sky. Indian defense officials said that the series of mysterious light-emitting points seen by the public are actually satellites, which should be the "star" launched by SpaceX. The "Chain" satellites flew over India. Due to the large number of transiting Starlink satellites, there was a scene of densely connected lines. Such a scene is actually not uncommon. In May last year, many netizens in Washington state in western China said they saw similar mysterious luminous objects in the night sky. From the pictures shared by netizens, we can see that there is indeed a series of mysterious luminous objects in the night sky. They are flying at a constant speed and are arranged very neatly. Although many people think it may be a UFO, experts say that the series of glowing objects seen by witnesses should be the Starlink satellite launched by SpaceX. Starlink Satellite
Starlink is actually a project of SpaceX, which plans to launch approximately 2019 to 2024. 12,000 satellites form the Starlink network to provide Internet services. Among so many satellites, 1,584 Starlink satellites will be deployed in low-Earth orbit about 550 kilometers above the ground. In addition, SpaceX also plans to add 30,000 satellites, and the number of Starlink satellites will be as high as 42,000. To build such a huge Starlink network in just a few years, it requires a large number of launch missions to complete. Fifty or sixty Starlink satellites will be sent into low-Earth orbit in each launch mission. Although SpaceX's Starlink plan is said to provide Internet services to everyone, many people think that its military use cannot be ignored, because Starlink satellites have many functions, not only to complete communication, but also to perform tasks such as satellite imaging and remote sensing detection. . In addition, when a large number of Starlink satellites are launched into outer space, it brings many risks to outer space activities. In the past few decades, humans have launched many satellites, probes, and spacecraft. Although some satellites, probes, and spacecraft have long re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, there are still many satellite wreckage and rocket wreckage still floating in outer space. These Space junk occupies a certain amount of space in space. Now that SpaceX has launched so many Starlink satellites, the Earth's low-Earth orbit will become more crowded, and the risk of collisions between satellites and these spacecraft will also be greatly increased. If the satellites in space collide, the consequences are very serious, because a large amount of debris will be generated, and these debris will be scattered everywhere to become new space junk, because the flying speed of these small debris and the flying speed of spacecraft and satellites are very fast, Even if a small piece of debris collides with a satellite or a spacecraft, it may directly destroy the satellite and the spacecraft. While the likelihood of a satellite-to-satellite collision may seem low, it's actually possible. On September 2, 2019, SpaceX's Starlink 44 satellite almost collided with ESA's "Aeolus" weather satellite. When the collision was about to happen, ESA made this weather satellite change its orbit urgently. A possible collision was avoided. The first satellite collision event in human history occurred at 11:55 am on February 10, 2009, when the satellites of the United States and Russia collided over Siberia. The US satellite is the Iridium 33 satellite launched in 1997, while the Russian satellite is the Cosmos 2251 satellite launched in 1993. Of course, the probability of satellite collision is relatively low, but even if these satellites do not collide during operation, it does not mean that the risk does not exist. Because some satellites may disintegrate themselves during operation, the resulting debris will also endanger other spacecraft. For example, on September 10, 2022, local time, Russian scientists issued a warning that a US satellite partially disintegrated in low-Earth orbit, which was the Galaxy 11 geosynchronous communication satellite launched by the United States in 1999. The reason for the disintegration of the satellite is not yet known, but it may be caused by the aging of the satellite's solar panels or other equipment. This may be one of the things we worry about most, because many satellites don't actually have a very long operating life, but they may not be controlled to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up after completing their mission, but let them continue to "walk around in outer space" ". Since the mission has been completed and out of control, we naturally cannot control the flight trajectory of these space junk, and we have no idea when it will disintegrate or when it will collide with other spacecraft.