In the last few days SpaceX has announced its plan to de-orbit one hundred Starlink satellites belonging to the first generation in order to keep orbital slots available and avoid unwanted debris generation.
SpaceX posted a statement on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday (Feb. 12) stating that this is the 'right thing to do to keep Space safe and sustainable'. Indeed, they also highlighted how a 'common issue in this small population of satellites that could increase the probability of failure in the future', without, though, specifying the nature of the issue.
Even though these satellites have been designed to autonomously maneuver to avoid potential collisions and perform orbital corrections, their re-entry have concerned a lot of experts in the field. Not just for this specific event, where SpaceX said to take full responsibility about any re-entry maneuver, but for the overall decision process and design behind the constellation de-orbiting process.
More generally speaking, it is becoming more and more common for commercial constellations and satellites alike, to perform de-orbiting procedures and in a lot of occasions these turned out to be uncontrolled events. SpaceX itself reported that Starlink constellation was involved on the victim side in the debris issue. As we read in the "Semi- annual constellation status report" on Dec. 29, 2023, Starlink satellites had to perform 24,410 collision avoidance maneuvers!
If you think that current number of orbiting satellites is about 5,200, they are just in the first half of the overall constellation, which should count about 12,000 satellites when completed, with a vision for an extension to 40,000 spacecraft at full expansion later in the future.
If you observe these numbers and how fast they are growing, you can easily conclude how Space, and low Earth orbit is becoming more and more crowded. And things are happening fast.
This is just one of the huge number of uncontrolled events and on the positive side we have the fact that Starlink satellites are specifically designed to fully disintegrate when re-entrying the Earth's atmosphere. However, this kind of policies are not always applied by all space companies out there, specifically on the private side.
This kind of superficial approach can pose much danger both on the operative-orbiting spacecraft and also on the ground, if de-orbiting is not executed properly on larger satellites which could partially survive de-orbiting and impact on the ground.
Conclusion
With 144 launches in 2024 specifically assigned to Starlink placements, SpaceX will still be one of the major occupant of low Earth orbit, while competitors and private companies of different sectors are approaching the new ease of orbital access, Space is now crowded as never before. Will be regulations effectively applied before finding ourselves trapped in our own junk?
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