Episode 14: How to Track Your Satellite and Other Astronomy Lessons

How do you track a satellite? How reliable is its re-entry into the atmosphere? And how do we know what is happening in space? Dr Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, talks to us about orbital profiles, space debris, and just how crowded LEO (lower Earth orbit) is getting these days. We discuss re-entry into the atmosphere, how mega-constellations might challenge our previous assumptions about the atmosphere, and how X-ray telescopes are helping us explore space.