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SpaceX announced today that it will send nearly 100 Starlink satellites into early retirement after identifying a flaw that could make them a concern later on. However, don’t expect fiery light shows, and if you use Starlink, your service should be unaffected.
the announcement explains that “the Starlink team identified a common problem in this subset of first-generation communications satellites” that “may increase the probability of failure.”
I’ve asked the company for more information and will update this post if I hear back, but based on the description and context, it seems like the “failure” in question would mean loss of control. Seventeen Starlink satellites are “currently non-operational”, but SpaceX did not say whether this was due to the same issue as the 100 de-orbited.
Unpowered satellites are more or less just debris, so even if they were in such low orbit, they would burn up in a few years rather than a few hundred. One of the criticisms of mega-constellations like Starlink is their potential to contribute to the space junk problem, and SpaceX doesn’t want to be the one people blame when the sky is full of broken satellites.
This explains why, with these satellites functioning perfectly well despite their age, SpaceX has decided to launch a controlled descent to take them out of orbit.
The descent will begin “in the coming weeks and months,” but these satellites are not capable of big moves, so this is a push in the downward direction. The de-orbit process will actually take about six months, during which they will also “take responsibility for maneuvering for any high-risk combinations”, meaning that if they cross paths with other satellites, the Starlink ones will politely Will move out of the way. ,
They will fall one by one, not all at once, so don’t bother looking at the sky.
However, Starlink users need not fear, as there are still thousands of working satellites out there. About 6,000 have been launched so far, and 406 have been de-orbited, and others may not be operational, but there are plenty more of them to serve customers.
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