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The Sun Is Causing Starlink Satellites To Drop From Space [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-02
The Sun has approached its solar maximum of its 11 year cyclic sun flare activity. That means larger geomagnetic storms approaching the Earth and its low orbit satellites. Starlink satellites are susceptible to the increase of atmospheric drag caused by these storms. This is leading to more Starlink satellites dropping from the sky earlier than expected and they may do so without burning up completely upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
It isn’t just Starlink satellites up there!
China launched a record breaking 260+ satellites last year and is planning to 43,000 more satellites.
Jeff Bezos is working on his Kuiper satellite project.
Europe has also been working on its own satellites; IRIS2 which plans to start service by 2030.
All these satellites and their debris leads to Kessler Syndrome named after former NASA scientist Donald Kessler whose 1978 paper, co-authored with Burton Cour-Palais, laid out the problem inherent in large amounts of space junk orbiting Earth.
Below are the articles used for this diary. I’m not even close to being an expert on any of this.
The sun is causing Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites to drop from space Eruptions from the sun are causing SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to fall to Earth “faster than expected”, according to Nasa scientists. A team from the US space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center made the discovery after investigating the impact of solar activity on the lifespan of satellites in low-Earth orbit. Their findings revealed that Elon Musk ’s space internet constellation is particularly prone to the effects of geomagnetic storms, which heat up the planet’s atmosphere and increase the drag on satellites. snip While some of these satellites use onboard thrusters to deorbit, others fall naturally due to atmospheric drag. The Nasa scientists found that during geomagnetic storms, any satellite orbiting below 300 kilometres burnt up 10 days earlier than expected. These quicker re-entries could increase the chance of satellites not burning up properly in the Earth’s atmosphere, the scientists said, and may be responsible for some parts of Starlink satellites reaching the ground. www.independent.co.uk/…
Space satellites and space junk.
A sky full of satellites and a growing problem snip SpaceX has far outpaced competitors like Amazon’s Kuiper project and China’s state-backed systems. For the same reason, the company has also been accused of monopolizing the space satellite industry since its inception. On the other hand, scientists and regulators are sounding the alarm about the broader implications of flooding low-Earth orbit with hardware. Concerns include space traffic, collision risks, and the long-term sustainability of satellite operations in increasingly crowded skies. snip The company has acknowledged that some solar storms have degraded service and, in one notable 2022 event, wiped out 40 satellites in a single blow. Even more concerning: not everything is burning up completely on reentry. Last year, a fragment of a Starlink satellite was recovered from a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada.In 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that Starlink satellites could injure or kill a person every two years and threaten to bring down an aircraft. cybernews.com/...
Kessler Syndrome
"Satellite collisions would produce orbiting fragments, each of which would increase the probability of further collisions, leading to the growth of a belt of debris around the Earth," the duo wrote. "The debris flux in such an Earth-orbiting belt could exceed the natural meteoroid flux, affecting future spacecraft designs." The Kessler Syndrome describes, and warns of, a cascade of orbital debris that could potentially hinder humanity's space ambitions and activities down the road. The original paper predicted that satellite collisions would become a source of space junk by the year 2000, if not sooner, unless humanity changed how it lofted payloads to orbit. But a timeline is not essential to the core idea. www.space.com/...
How to mitigate problem of Space Junk?
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