Animation 10k Starlink Satellites
spaceweather.com27 points by MeteorMarc 7 hours ago
27 points by MeteorMarc 7 hours ago
What I found so fascinating about starling is how easy it was for a single country, even a single company in this case, to pollute near-earth space.
I understand the mechanics of LEO, and the de-orbit mechanics put in place. But the world-wide impact, unknown side-effects on the upper layers of atmosphere on the re-entry of literally thousands of satellites within fairly short period of time?
It wasn't easy at all. Nobody except SpaceX could have done it at the time. This is the result of SpaceX being able to launch much cheaper than anyone before them, and being able to use these high-cadence launches to both implement and test incremental improvements in their rockets and streamline their reuse of preflown boosters.
SpaceX was the only conceivable launch provider for this, and if it had been an external customer that cares too much about the risk of these launches the incremental improvements that made this cost-effective wouldn't have been possible. Realistically this was only viable for SpaceX doing it as part of R&D for their own rockets. And even then this puts severe financial strain on them because their original business plan was built around having Starship available years ago for even cheaper deployment of bigger satellites
Of course now that it has been done and technology has advanced by ~7 years it is much easier for new mega constellations. But at the time SpaceX started doing it the idea was rightfully called insane
And phased-array antennae. The network would be next to useless if each receiver needed to track the satellite physically.
Beamforming is an old technology though. It's not hard to do, just a pain to do cheaply when you've got a bajillion emitters unless you have custom silicon.
True. And what will happen when another company wants their 10k satellites on orbit too? And companies from another countries, as well.
On a bad year, there might be a few hundred tons of Starlink satellites reentering the atmosphere. In the same year, there will be something like 5000 tons of meteors reentrying, and if you include space dust that radars don't see, you're looking at a few times more than that.
This appeal to scary ignorance to poop on a technology is a cynical reflex. Instead of just saying that a bare number with no context scares you, you should dig deeper and try to actually back up or invalidate your fears.
You're low by a factor of three.
You probably could make the same point in a better way as well.
How are you getting all the real time data of the position of these satellites?
10,000 Starlink satellites orbiting the Earth?? I didn't know there were so many, really so many.
Their presence has already radically transformed the orbital environment.
There are so many that in 2025 alone they performed around 300,000 collision avoidance maneuvers.
In short: on the one hand, they're convenient for us because of their fantastic internet connection, but on the other, they're generating truly unprecedented artificial traffic in space.
All this worries me a little.
You shouldn't be worried about it, these satellites are in Low Earth Orbits that readily decay if the satellites don't regularly reboost themselves using their electric thrusters. And performing collision avoidance maneuvers is just part of how they're designed to work. Note that its 300,000 avoidances, not collisions. These are more like ballerinas than careening billiard balls.
It's an LLM spambot, it is incapable of worrying. I'm much more worried about another instance of nobody noticing what they're replying to.
True, but at scale of 10k, chances of collision due to malfunction are not 0.
Nobody says the chance of a collisions is zero. That's why it being in LEO is relevant. Internet fools who just get scared by the big number without considering the details of the situation always get this wrong.
So, because the 10,000+ Starlinks launched so far (and the countless future satellites Bezos and others want to launch for their own constellations) are in LEO, nothing bad can happen (it can only good happen)?
That is, if you disregard the following quote from the article:
> Each re-entry deposits about 30 kg of aluminum oxide into the upper atmosphere--an uncontrolled chemistry experiment on a planetary scale.
The bad that can happen is limited by it being in LEO. If these were MEO sats but 50x fewer (Bezos sats BTW) you wouldn't be whining about it even though the potential debris would last thousands of years instead of less than ten. And appealing to the fear of the unknown is little more than motivated reasoning, the amount of rocks and rock dust entering the atmosphere dwarfs Starlink reentries.
And so what if they collide? This isn’t Kessler syndrome territory, it’s low enough orbit that debris would re-enter and burn up rapidly. You’d lose the colliding satellites, and that’s likely all.
Not that there has been a single starlink collision, but y’know.
> Not that there has been a single starlink collision
How sure are you that that would be made public?
Would it be always observed and caught outside of SpaceX?
If not, is that proof that if there such collisions they don't matter?
> How sure are you that that would be made public?
Extremely sure. There are both numerous private, academic, and governmental agencies that are constantly searching for both collision paths, and collision debris.
The debris cloud alone would generate an extremely visible signature.
> Would it be always observed and caught outside of SpaceX?
Yes.
There are a great many eyes on the sky, and you can’t hide stuff up there - even every secret military satellite is known and tracked - so something as substantial as a collision would likely be known about before it even happens, as ephemera don’t change without an input.
Thank you for the answer. I'm aware of the degree of coverage over land but I was wondering about the ocean side of things as well.
Wait until multiple, non-coordinated copy-cat constellations are sent up there ...
Large operators like SpaceX and OneWeb do coordinate with each other. Ground based radar tracking data from the government is also made available to operators, and SpaceX has developed their own optical space-based detection system (Stargaze) which makes data available to other operators as well.
There's a lot of money in this stuff, lot's of planning. It's being managed by competent people who give a shit.
Imagine a threat actor blowing up one or two of them. Or malfunction leading to collision with a launcher. Or any satellite malfunction and failure to de-orbit in time.
Remember MAD, mutual assured distraction? Well we created another one for access to space
> Or any satellite malfunction and failure to de-orbit in time
Last year they had one "dead as a doornail" Starlink satellite in space. [1] It's v1.5, so deployed sometime between 2021 and 2023. It should be naturally deorbited from atmospheric drag by now.
There was also the other Starlink satellite with a tank rupture last December [2]
A low number of dead satellites isn't an issue as the other satellites can steer around it. Their orbit also quickly decays to a level where it's below the orbital plane of the other satellites. The real danger is if a large enough number malfunction that they start colliding with each other at high speeds
1: https://starlink.com/public-files/Starlink_Approach_to_Satel...
2: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/a-spacex-...
while most of LEO satellites are already probably used for military purposes, they are not subject to MAD deterrence, but probably one of the first easy targets should war erupt
Space is big. Really, really big.
Even with 10,000 satellites, any one satellite is probably going to be 100 miles away from the next nearest satellite.