How UK firm New Orbit is leading the new space race

The logic behind VLEO is simple: if you want a better picture of something, you move closer. If you want a stronger signal, you reduce the distance it needs to travel. But space doesn’t see it that way. The whispers of Earth’s atmosphere at that altitude start to become a problem. Papulov compares it to mountaineering. At the top of Everest, the atmosphere is thin. Climb down and the air gets thicker. The same thing happens to satellites as they move closer to the planet. “Once you start to have a more dense atmosphere, it starts to decelerate you,” he says. A conventional satellite at New Orbit’s target altitude might survive only weeks before it loses orbit and burns up.