(Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
SpaceX is retiring Starlink satellites at an increasingly high rate, with as many as four or five satellites plunging into the Earth’s atmosphere each day.
The data comes from Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who tracks orbiting satellites, including those for Starlink. On Tuesday, he mentioned the increase in Starlink satellites burning up in the atmosphere after one five-year-old Starlink satellite was spotted blazing through the night skies over northern Illinois.
SpaceX is "retiring and incinerating about 4 or 5 Starlinks every day at the moment, spread across the world; sometimes you get one at night time in the US,” McDowell tweeted.
In an email, McDowell tells PCMag that 87 Starlink satellites have re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in January so far. He’s also plotted the satellite deorbits in a graph, which shows a large spike in recent months.
“Reentry rate was mostly low until May 2024, then increased to one to two per day as SpaceX started some mass retirements. A second batch of retirements started in December at a rate of three to four per day,” he said.
(Credit: Jonathan McDowell)McDowell also noted: “Of 7,821 Starlinks launched (so far), 817 have been retired to reentry, including some that failed at birth." Over 500 of the retired Starlink satellites were first-generation models. Meanwhile, the company currently has about 6,200 existing Starlink satellites in operational orbits, according to McDowell's tracking.
SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment, but the company might be retiring large batches of older Starlink satellites, which are designed to orbit the Earth for around five years. Once deorbited, SpaceX can then replace them with newer models through future space launches.
SpaceX has also retired Starlink satellites because of malfunctions in the hardware. In February 2024, the company decided to deorbit 100 Starlink satellites, citing a potential flaw in their components that could cause them to fail completely.
“The satellites will follow a safe, circular, and controlled lowering operation that should take approximately six months for most of the vehicles,” SpaceX said at the time, later adding: “SpaceX has the capacity to build up to 55 satellites per week and launch more than 200 satellites per month.”
In a letter to the US Federal Communications Commission last month, the company also said: “SpaceX proactively deorbits satellites before large issues develop based on detailed engineering analysis of the likelihood of critical system failures. SpaceX takes this costly approach out of an abundance of caution to best preserve and protect low Earth orbit.”
The letter also says SpaceX deorbited 149 Starlink satellites between June and Nov. 24, 2024.
Starlink satellites are designed to completely incinerate when they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, so the public shouldn’t be alarmed. Still, astronomers have been concerned that burning Starlink satellites threatens the ozone layer, pointing to the release of vaporized metals. In response, astronomers have called on US regulators and lawmakers to investigate the environmental effects of satellite deorbits before approving more launches.