Supercomputer simulations reveal that only a small fraction of satellites in Earth-Moon space would survive long-term, highlighting the challenges of expanding orbital capabilities. This finding is significant as the number of active spacecraft orbiting Earth skyrockets, driven by private satellite "megaconstellations" like SpaceX's Starlink and China's Thousand Sails project. The next logical step is to explore cislunar space, the region between Earth and the Moon, which could benefit our planet's infrastructure and support future human colonies on the Moon. However, predicting the orbits of spacecraft in cislunar space is complex due to gravitational interactions with Earth, the Moon, and the Sun, as well as radiation from the Sun. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used supercomputers to simulate the trajectories of approximately 1 million cislunar objects, revealing that only 9.7% of these orbits remained stable over a six-year period. The study's findings, published in the journal Research Notes of the AAS, offer valuable insights into the challenges of satellite deployment in cislunar space, and the researchers have made the orbital data accessible on an open-source platform for future studies.
