Ask HN: Starlink for Stopping Asteroids?

2 points·punnerud··5 comments

Could Starlink satellites be maneuvered precisely enough to crash into an asteroid if there ever was a need for it?

They don’t need to be fast as long as they are in the right spot at the right time to cause a crash, resulting in debris hitting the earth rather than one fireball?

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Yes, they could be. But zero serious-threat-to-the-earth asteroids would actually break up from a high-speed collision with a Starlink satellite.

Analogy - trying to protect your own battleship, from the shells of an enemy battleship, by having trained mosquitoes flying a few feet from the sides of your ship, ready to throw themselves in front of the enemy battleship's shells.

I am not an expert in this field but Starlink satellites are tiny 260kg. An asteroid that would pose a thread to earth would not be affected even if every Starlink satellite were to manage somehow get in it's path. Their 28,000 kilometers per hour orbital velocity vs an asteroids 17 to 25 kilometers per second impact vector and the 260kg mass of a little satellite vs many millions of tons asteroid combined with their low earth orbit means not enough time to change an asteroids trajectory even if they had significant mass.

Isn’t the speed of the asteroid most important?

“Asteroids are the most common type of impactor on earth, and they crash into the planet at an estimated velocity of 18 km/s”

I think all of the factors speed, mass and trajectory of all objects involved draw the analogy of the tiniest mote of dust attempting to alter the speed and trajectory of a fully loaded tractor trailer in a competition to move beer coast to coast in record time.

It's kinda like throwing squirrels at a speeding truck to slow it down. Sure, there'll be debris, but not from the truck...

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