KW/CENSUS · POPULATION BY ALTITUDE
Where the debris lives
Catalogued fragments larger than ten centimetres, by altitude band. Below 600 kilometres the atmosphere still charges rent and clears its floor in years. Above it, drag thins to nothing and the sky keeps what it is given — the bulge between 700 and 1,000 km is where forty years of breakups went and stayed.
KW/LEDGER · NOTABLE FRAGMENTATIONS
Seven breakups, one neighborhood
Fragmentation events write the census. The seven below account for 3,142 of the 5,065 fragments on the books — 62 percent — and most of them settled between 700 and 1,000 kilometres: the altitude that forgets slowest.
| LEDGER | OBJECT | DATE | CAUSE | FRAGMENTS | ALT KM | ON ORBIT |
|---|
FRAGMENT COUNTS ARE OBJECTS ≥10 CM STILL CATALOGUED AT EPOCH. KW/F-011 AND KW/F-014 ALONE PLACED 2,027 FRAGMENTS IN THE SUN-SYNCHRONOUS CORRIDOR.
KW/DOCTRINE · ON STEWARDSHIP
The sky does not clean itself
// Orbit is a commons. There is exactly one, and everyone’s grandchildren live downstream of it.
At orbital speed, mass is beside the point. A fleck of paint at seven kilometres per second arrives with the energy of a rifle round; a ten-centimetre fragment arrives like a truck. There are no small objects up there — only small warnings.
Altitude is destiny. Below about 600 kilometres, the thin last breath of atmosphere drags everything down on a schedule of years, and the sky wipes itself clean. At 800 kilometres a discarded bolt outlives the engineer who torqued it. At 1,000, it outlives her language. The census above is not a snapshot of a problem; it is a map of where we chose to be careless.
In 1978, Donald Kessler and Burton Cour-Palais worked out the arithmetic of crowding: collisions make fragments, and fragments make collisions. Past a certain density the cascade feeds itself and stops caring whether anyone keeps launching. The ledger above is not a history. It is a rate.
Stewardship is unglamorous work. Vent the tanks. Short the batteries. Clear the lane on schedule, not eventually. Track everything, and publish what you track, because a conjunction warning withheld is a collision co-authored. Lighthouses were never glamorous either. The watch is kept anyway.
Vent every tank, short every battery, spin down every wheel at end of mission. A dead satellite should be inert, not patient.
Clear low orbit within five years of retirement. Twenty-five was a courtesy to a smaller sky.
An object you cannot see is a collision you cannot dodge. Radar cross-section is a design requirement.
Conjunction data is safety-of-life information, not a trade secret and not a bargaining chip.
Boost derelicts to the graveyard ring 300 kilometres above the belt while the last kilograms of fuel remain. The belt is finite real estate on an infinite lease.