How LeoLabs Is Using New Tech to Target Space Junk

From 1960 to 2020, the number of satellites in orbit increased at a slow and steady pace. LeoLabs has built technology that tracks everything in space, rocket bodies that have gone up there, satellites, all the debris from things that have collidedand exploded. The company has raised more than $100 million and is building a network of radars around the world to track objects in space. A big part of their mission is not just tracking satellites but actually making sure that satellites don't collide into each other but actually pay out to companies like Space X and Planet Labs to find out where their satellites are and if they hit each other. And so I'm going to head into their office and try and figure out. how this technology works. It's kind of an essential technologythat. we're going to need in the coming years, as space fills with more and more. stuff. The core of what we do is tracking all the satellites,. all the pieces of debrisin low-Earth orbit and the reason we're in business is spaceis. gone into space race 2.0. The risk. from debris is scaling up. None of the tracking systemswere built to scale. And the. reason we started the company is because we knew how to buildscalable tracking systems. So. we were ahead of the game in kind of predictingwhere this economy was going. Yeah, that'sthe whole reason we are in business. The number of satellite has gone upso dramatically. Three years ago, there were. 800 functional satellitesin that part of space. Now there's close to 4,000. On top of. that, there are about 15,000 pieces ofbris tracked today: dead satellites, dead rocket bodies. and fragments of it. And there's about 250,000 critical but untracked Pieces of debrisup there today. If you've got one. site, you can check in on a satelliteabout twice a day. Really, you need a long timesthat you can wait. You know, we've. got more than 20 sites around the globe today, and in the next few years, we'll have 20 more sites. And then we've got three more more sites under construction. That's right, yeah. A lot of the satellites are in Alaska, Costa Rica, Texas, New Zealand and New Zealand. And we'vegot three more sitesunder construction in Alaska and Alaska, and then we're gonna have three more in New Zealand as well. And that's OK, yeah, we're getting there. We've got a long way to go, but it's going to be a long, long time before we get to the end of the line. And it's a good thing we have these radar systemsthat look up at the sky and spot and catalog. objectsas they orbit, as they orbit. If. only someone, somewhere was doing something about it. It might seem like a roomy enough place, but. it's already filledwith those existing satellites, leftover rocket bodies and debris from collisions in some. countries- Russia,. we're looking at you - have only made matters worse by firing missiles. into space and blowing things up. If companies like. SpaceX, Amazon, and many others get their way, most of these satelliteswill settle in low. earth orbit, which is right here. The world became awash in rocket. and satellite startups. More people than ever before want to put more stuff than everbefore. into orbit. The business revolution is where the business revolution has happened. And this is not an. anomaly. This is a real problem, the kind of problemthat could ruin space now and for many years into the future, if you don't take action now. The goal is to make sure that space is safe for all of us and for the future of our planet. And if you want to make a difference in the world, you have to take a look at the technology that's being developed in Silicon Valley and in other parts of the world. You can find out more about how to get involved in the space industry, like in the Silicon Valley space industry and the companies that are helping to make it a better place to live and work in the future. The next few weeks will be a big step toward making space a better, safer, more secure place to work in and out of space, and that's what we're all talking about now and into the 2030s and 2050s and 2070s and 2030s ahead of us. The U.S. and the rest of the globe will be in the forefront of the space race, and the 2030 and 2040s, too. The future of space will be much more exciting and more exciting than the future for the next decade and beyond.