The Traffic Jam in Low Earth Orbit

Until 10 years ago, relatively few things were in Earth’s orbit.

So What’s in Space Right Now?

AN EVEN MORE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION When China launched the last stage of its space station in October 2022, it opened up low orbit for scientists far beyond its borders. Tiangong has so far agreed to host projects from 12 countries. In May, the first experimental equipment reached the 54-foot-long station.

A NEW MOON BUGGY In August, with the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, India became the fourth country to safely land on the moon (following the Soviet Union, the United States and China). The six-wheeled rover, Pragyan, explored near the lunar south pole, where scientists think deep craters may hold ice.

COOPERATIVE COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES More than 80 countries have sent satellites into orbit, including many smaller nations, which often share costs and expertise. TurkmenAlem52°E/MonacoSAT, a communications satellite built in France and launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., is shared by Monaco and Turkmenistan.

EYES IN THE SKY Imagery from satellite constellations from the space-intelligence company Maxar has contributed to several Pulitzer Prizes for reporting. Photos taken by its satellites are used for geospatial intelligence by the U.S. government.

ELON MUSK’S EVER-MULTIPLYING SATELLITES Over 50 percent of all active satellites — currently about 5,000 — are from the Elon Musk-owned company Starlink. Musk plans to eventually have as many as 42,000 of the communications satellites in orbit, as The Times reported this July.

LOTS AND LOTS OF JUNK In 2009, a dead Russian satellite, Cosmos 2251, crashed into an operational telecommunications satellite, creating . . .

CLOUDS OF DEBRIS According to NASA, there are 28,000 pieces of debris in low Earth orbit that are larger than a softball, half a million pieces roughly the size of a marble and 100 million about the size of a pea. Even paint flecks can damage satellites, space stations or spacecraft when traveling at 17,500 miles per hour.

AUTONOMOUS MINERS In April 2021, the China-based company Origin Space launched NEO-01, its first robot designed to test asteroid-mining capabilities. In April 2023, the start-up AstroForge launched a satellite and is now assessing its ability to vaporize and sort an asteroidlike material in orbit.

SCIENTISTS AND THEIR EXPERIMENTS The International Space Station houses astronauts, yes, but we’re not the only living things sent into orbit. Scientists on the station completed around 500 experiments from September 2022 to September 2023.

They have recently worked with 120 Hawaiian bobtail squid to understand how bacteria interact with their hosts during spaceflight.

And they have grown Red Robin dwarf tomatoes to help develop agricultural methods for long space flights.

There’s also a nonhuman member of the current space-station crew: Sasha, a stuffed-animal three-toed sloth, brought as a zero-g indicator; when Sasha started to float in the cabin, the astronauts knew they were entering orbit.

LOGOS, LOGOS, LOGOS If you looked closely at the Ispace lander as it headed for the moon on April 25, you might have recognized some shapes emblazoned on its side: the Suzuki “S”; the crane of Japan Airlines; the rhombuses of SMBC, a Japanese bank. The age of space advertising is here.

WORKS OF ART, BOTH HUGE AND EXTREMELY TINY Art in space ranges from the minuscule to the size of spacecraft. In 2018, the aerospace manufacturer Rocket Lab sent a reflective geodesic sphere called “Humanity Star” into orbit; viewers could see the shining disco ball from Earth.

Works from a second grader and a fourth grader in Florida will soon head into orbit as winners of the state’s Space Art Contest.

In December, the Lunar Codex, a collection featuring works from over 30,000 artists, will launch its first set of more than 5,000 prints, songs, stories, poems and films to the Sinus Viscositatis region of the moon via an Astrobotic mission lander. The artwork is digitized and miniaturized into tiny images, which are imprinted onto a piece of nickel-based nanofiche the size of a dime.

DRUG LABS Commercial drug manufacturing is often easier in microgravity, because protein crystals grown in space tend to form more uniform structures than those grown on Earth. This year, Bristol Myers Squibb led an experiment on the I.S.S. to crystallize medications. The start-up Varda Space Industries launched its first spacecraft in June to test crystal production of ritonavir, an antiviral H.I.V. drug.

ROBOTIC SPACE PLANES The United States and China currently have reusable robotic spacecraft regularly in orbit: two X-37Bs, built by Boeing and operated by the U.S. Space Force; and a vehicle believed to be operated by the Chinese Ministry of National Defense. Combined, the two X-37B craft have flown six times in space since 2010, most recently landing after 908 days in November 2022.

TELESCOPES NOT CALLED WEBB OR HUBBLE There are several telescopes in Earth orbit answering urgent questions about the universe. The IXPE, or Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, observes some of the most extreme objects in our universe (like supernova explosions and jet streams shot from black holes) to learn how they work.

Charley Locke is a writer who often covers youth and elders. She last wrote for the magazine about pandemic funding and public education. Sean Dong is a motion and 3-D designer in Baltimore. His work often condenses stories of intricate subjects into brief, looping animations.

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