Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell has told EarthSky that one or two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth every day.

McDowell’s website, Jonathan’s Space Report, is widely regarded as a definitive source on spacecraft that go up … and eventually come down. The lifespan of low-Earth orbit satellites, such as Starlink, is only about five to seven years. Soon, McDowell told EarthSkyt, there will be up to five satellite re-entries per day.

“With all constellations deployed, we expect about 30,000 low-Earth orbit satellites (Starlink, Amazon Kuiper, others) and perhaps another 20,000 satellites at 1,000 km [620 miles] from the Chinese systems. For the low-orbit satellites we expect a 5-year replacement cycle, and that translates to 5 re-entries a day. It’s not clear if the Chinese will orbit-lower theirs or just accelerate us to chain-reaction Kessler syndrome,” McDowell said.

The worrying Kessler Syndrome is where one satellite collides with another and causes a chain reaction of debris which could threaten a complete constellation.

Other posts by :

1. 650 Starlink D2C craft in orbit
2. Bank upgrades SES to ‘Buy’
3. Eutelsat shareholders reach agreement at AGM
4. Ghana makes MultiChoice fee decision
5. SES announces €0.25c dividend
6. Russia “blinding and destroying” German satellites
7. Bank: AST, Starlink, Kuiper targeting $200bn market
8. Rivada: Is no news good news?
9. SES celebrates Intelsat acquisition

Categories: Blogs, Broadband, Inside Satellite, Satellite

Tags: satellite, spacex, starlink