this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2026
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Aren't these low enough that they would just burn up pretty quickly?
Not if they're hit with a missile or another satellite. Debris could pretty easily be rocketed up into a higher orbit from a military strike.
Those orbits will be elliptical thus they will still go trough LEO on one side of the orbit and thus lose energy. You need two boosts to create a circular orbit. With one boost only one side goes to a higher orbit height but the other side will stay at the original orbit height. The bigger problem is that they can hit other stuff when they pass trough higher orbits.
Wouldn't that end up in a highly elliptical trajectory? I don't think that would be much worse TBH.