Space Debris Visualization beats statistics

The ESA have put out an impressive set of visualizations of the number of satellites and space debris in orbit around the earth. I am certain that they used the information from the papers by Liou and Johnson on space debris which I highlighted in previous posts.

This visualization beats my earlier analysis of all the satellites in orbit for sheer beauty of display. They have put together an impressive array of visualizations of the simulation of space debris generated by collisions. However I feel it doesn't really convey the numerical details of the issue. The chart below allows you to see all of the satellites in both circular and elliptical orbits, but isn't as pretty because I don't have teams of visualization experts working on it, just me and excell.



Here I thought I would put the map of Earth below the geosynchronous satellite histogram, just so one could see that the satellites are bunched over the populous parts of the globe.


I hate to sound like a spoilsport about the great visualization. I guess it is good that the ESA is getting out the message about satellite debris, though I feel that they (and NASA, the Russians and the Chinese) are the ones who would work on it, not me.

(Howard, and UniverseToday were also enticed by the pretty pictures)