VLEO: The Self-Cleaning Frontier for Satellites

The piece surveys very low Earth orbits (VLEO) as a self-cleaning approach to orbital congestion, citing ESA's GOCE and JAXA's SLATS as missions that operated at very low altitudes and required continuous propulsion, and discusses future ABEP concepts (e.g., Redwire’s SabreSat) that could allow 90 km–level operation indefinitely if power and propulsion hurdles are overcome.