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A recent investigation modeled the behavior of hypothetical satellites across a million separate near-moon orbits between our planet and its celestial neighbor.(Image credit: Dan Herchek/LLNL)
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If there existed a million satellites placed at varying spots linking Earth and the moon, less than a tenth would remain intact for a duration justifying their initial deployment, current supercomputer simulations hint. While this isn’t as catastrophic as it might appear, it underscores the intricate challenges tied to expanding humankind’s spacefaring capabilities, the study reveals.
During the recent years, the count of operational spacecraft circling our globe has risen rapidly — primarily attributed to the advent of private satellite “megaconstellations,” such as SpaceX’s well-known Starlink system and China’s expanding Thousand Sails venture — and this pattern is only commencing.
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Once LEO becomes populated with spacecraft, the natural evolution involves positioning satellites within cislunar space — the span linking Earth and the moon, per Live Science’s sibling site Space.com. Executing this will not only bolster our world’s framework but additionally furnish internet access and ancillary offerings to forthcoming human habitations on the moon.
Nonetheless, forecasting spacecraft pathways in cislunar territory presents a greater hurdle, due to their vulnerability to a gravitational standoff involving Earth, the moon, and the sun (which impacts objects distal from our planet). Devoid of Earth’s safeguarding magnetic shield, the radiation emitting from our native star also tends to destabilize orbital routes within this sector of space.
The quantity of satellites surrounding Earth is swiftly climbing, motivating researchers to contemplate situating spacecraft notably further out from our world.
Addressing this concern, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California utilized a duo of their supercomputers — Quartz and Ruby — to replicate the paths of roughly a million cislunar entities. The simulations mandated about 1.6 million CPU hours, a task that would have occupied a solitary computer for about 182 years, according to an LLNL announcement. The supercomputers wrapped up the job in merely three days.
Within these replicated orbits, approximately 54% exhibited resilience for at least a year, while only 9.7% displayed stability throughout the simulation’s six-year timeframe. The orbital specifics were disclosed in August 2025 within the journal Research Notes of the AAS, and the team’s examination was posted on the preprint server arXiv in December. (The latter report has not undergone peer evaluation thus far.)
The team formulated the simulated pathways to encompass a broad scope, accounting for an assortment of prospective dilemmas, including some unforeseeable by the team.
“The objective was to sidestep any assumptions concerning desired orbit configurations,” stated Travis Yeager, the study’s chief author and a research scientist at LLNL, in the announcement. “Our intent was to approach it as if possessing no prior insight into this domain.”
Uncertain orbits
Contrasting with simulations of LEO trajectories, which possess augmented steadiness and regularity, cislunar orbits present heightened ambiguity. This necessitated the team’s calculations to “advance through time in segmented intervals,” rendering them notably more computationally exacting, the researchers noted.
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“Predicting a [cislunar] satellite’s position after one week necessitates discrete, incremental approximations,” Yeager detailed. “There isn’t a single equation available for predicting its exact destination.”
Augmenting the quantity of spacecraft within cislunar orbit will facilitate essential amenities for upcoming individuals inhabiting the moon.
One striking element influencing these orbits was Earth’s subtle gravitational shift stemming from the planet’s rotation, as observed by the researchers. “The Earth lacks the characteristics of a point source,” Yaeger remarked. “It exhibits a lumpy formation.” He cited the diminished gravitational pull over Canada compared to that over the Atlantic Ocean.
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Despite a limited survival percentage among simulated satellites, the outcomes still correlate to about 97,000 stable cislunar orbits, fostering diverse prospects for subsequent regional investigations. The team noted that discerning ineffective orbits carries equal weight to recognizing effective ones.
“From a data-analysis perspective, it constitutes a compelling dataset,” Yaeger expressed. “A million orbits furnish ample scope for exhaustive examination.”
The investigators have disseminated the orbital trajectories on an open-source platform, permitting unrestrained access to the information for imminent studies pertaining to cislunar satellites.
Harry BakerSocial Links NavigationSenior Staff Writer
Harry is a senior staff writer, situated in the U.K., for Live Science. He graduated with a degree in marine biology at the University of Exeter before pursuing journalism. His area of focus is encompassing numerous areas such as space exploration, planetary science, space conditions, climate variations, animal conduct, and paleontology. His work on the solar maximum received “best space submission” at the 2024 Aerospace Media Awards and was shortlisted in the “top scoop” category at the NCTJ Awards for Excellence in 2023. He is additionally in charge of Live Science’s Earth from space series weekly.
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‘Positioning the servers in orbit is a silly concept’: Could data hubs aloft aid in averting an AI energy predicament? Perspectives diverge.