Starlink is burning up one or two satellites a day in Earth’s atmosphere
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/starlink_vaporizes_satellites_daily/
Starlink is burning up one or two satellites a day in Earth’s atmosphere
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/starlink_vaporizes_satellites_daily/
4 Comments
Important quotes from this article
>Starlink isn’t the biggest concern when it comes to passing the Kessler tipping point,
>China’s satellite plans are far more worrying.
Also, a very important fact that was not mentioned in the article
>Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day.
>Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites could damage the environment for decades, study says
>Mega satellite constellations produce destructive gases when they burn up in atmosphere at end of service lives
>Mega satellite constellations such as SpaceX’s Starlink spew copious amounts of aluminium oxide gas in the atmosphere that could deplete the ozone layer, according to the research published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
>Aluminium oxides deplete ozone by causing it to react destructively with chlorine, the study says.
>The oxides can stay in the atmosphere and destroy the ozone layer for decades, researchers warn.
>“Only in recent years have people started to think this might become a problem,” says Joseph Wang, one of the study’s authors.
>“We were one of the first teams to look at what the implication of these facts might be.”
>SpaceX alone has permission to launch another 12,000 Starlink satellites while Amazon and other tech giants also plan to launch thousands of satellites in the coming years.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280
When an article like this gets published, ask yourself why. It’s a hit piece, paid by musk many competitors who don’t give a fuck about environment (same as musk, don’t get me wrong) but are paid to pretend they do because it weakens musk’s monopoly in the 3 sectors where he’s winning Vs the incumbents, namely space launchers, satellites and (partially) Electric Vehicles.
The article talks a lot about Kessler syndrome, the possibility that a cloud of space junk may make Earth orbit unusable for centuries, but ignores the fact that Starlink satellites burn up daily helps to *prevent* Kessler syndrome. Better to put them in orbits that gradually decay and they burn up than a higher orbit where they will stick around and contribute to the space junk problem indefinitely.