Sometimes at night you can see a satellite pass overhead as a small point of light that moves silently in a straight line, taking a few minutes to cross the sky, and often getting a bit brighter and dimmer again at a fixed rate. Sometimes at night you can see a shooting star, a point of light that appears, brightens, and fades again, while moving across the sky in a fraction of a second. A shooting star sometimes leaves a glowing trail behind for a few seconds, and sometimes flares up at the end.
Sometimes a shooting star crosses the path of a satellite, but satellites and shooting stars have nothing to do with each other. Shooting stars only flare up when they enter the atmosphere, while satellites must stay far above the atmosphere to avoid falling back into the atmosphere and turning into shooting stars themselves. Shooting stars show up at random places in the sky, so it is a coincidence if one happens to show up in the same direction as (but much closer to you than) a satellite.
However, shooting stars come from space as (small) meteoroids, and there they might hit a satellite. That's why satellites have a thick skin. Most meteoroids are smaller than a grain of sand and cannot do much damage to such a satellite. There are also large meteoroids that could destroy a satellite, but those are rare. If you make the skin of the satellite thick and strong enough, then you can make the chance as small as you want that during the planned lifetime of the satellite it will be hit by a meteoroid that can do damage to it.
Sometimes a shooting star crosses the path of a satellite, but satellites and shooting stars have nothing to do with each other. Shooting stars only flare up when they enter the atmosphere, while satellites must stay far above the atmosphere to avoid falling back into the atmosphere and turning into shooting stars themselves. Shooting stars show up at random places in the sky, so it is a coincidence if one happens to show up in the same direction as (but much closer to you than) a satellite.
However, shooting stars come from space as (small) meteoroids, and there they might hit a satellite. That's why satellites have a thick skin. Most meteoroids are smaller than a grain of sand and cannot do much damage to such a satellite. There are also large meteoroids that could destroy a satellite, but those are rare. If you make the skin of the satellite thick and strong enough, then you can make the chance as small as you want that during the planned lifetime of the satellite it will be hit by a meteoroid that can do damage to it.
-
no. they are lightyears away