Leo Labs is a Silicon Valley startup tracking and analyzing all of the stuff orbiting Earth

and there is a lot of stuff.

We always talk about how space is becoming more congested and

contested, but just in less than five years the number of active payloads has

grown in low-Earth orbit from 900 to over 9,000.

Today, you along with about 13,000 pieces of space

debris.

And so keeping track of all that,

and then giving our customers a sense of when their high value assets might be at risk

is kind of the core of our value proposition.

And that number is growing.

Just last month the Chinese Long March 6A rocket broke apart after a satellite mega constellation

launch, creating a cloud of space junk.

CEO Tony Frazier says Leo Labs was, over the course of several days, not only able to verify that explosion, but chronicle

and now track the growth of the resulting debris cloud.

As more activity takes off in low-Earth orbit, space domain awareness and space traffic management

needs are as well, both for companies and countries.

If you think about, you know, how we navigate in the

and terrestrial world, you know, with our GPS devices, you know, and mapping services

and what's happening with autonomy and all the other areas, you know, having a living orbital map is,

it will be important in space. You know, just as we, you know, we wouldn't leave our house, you know, to get to, you know, the office or the airport or any other location,

you without having real-time traffic information.

...