Crowded Low-Earth Orbit Could Enter Debris Catastrophe in Days if Control Fails

New research introduces the CRASH Clock to estimate how quickly a serious, debris-generating collision could occur in crowded low-Earth orbit if satellites lose control; using June 2025 data, a loss of command for avoidance could trigger a catastrophic collision in about 2.8 days, with a broader version at 5.5 days and a far longer 164-day gap in 2018. The risk is heightened by megaconstellations such as Starlink, which perform thousands of maneuvers, and by solar storms that expand Earth's atmosphere and disrupt tracking, making collision assessments harder and potentially leading to rapid debris growth in a Carrington-scale event.