SpaceX’s Starlink is planning a major change to how its satellites orbit Earth, with the goal of making space safer.
Yesterday on New Year’s Day, Michael Nicolls, VP of Starlink Engineering at SpaceX, said the company will begin lowering thousands of satellites to a lower orbit over the course of the year (via Tesla North).
“Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety,” Nicolls said on Thursday morning.
Starlink plans to lower satellites currently flying at about 550 kilometres above Earth down to roughly 480 kilometres. The move will affect around 4,400 satellites and will be coordinated with regulators, other satellite operators, and USSPACECOM.
“The shell lowering is being tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM,” Nicolls said.
Lowering the satellites means they will come back into Earth’s atmosphere much faster if something goes wrong. This is especially important as the Sun heads toward a quieter phase, when the atmosphere becomes thinner and debris can stay in orbit longer.
“As solar mininum approaches, atmospheric density decreases which means the ballistic decay time at any given altitude increases,” Nicolls said. “Lowering will mean a >80% reduction in ballistic decay time in solar minimum, or 4+ years reduced to a few months.”
What the heck does that mean? Simply put, as the Sun becomes less active, Earth’s atmosphere thins out, which means satellites can stay in orbit much longer if something goes wrong. By lowering its satellites, Starlink can make sure failed satellites fall back to Earth much faster, cutting that time from more than four years down to just a few months.
Starlink says the lower orbit also reduces the risk of collisions, since there are fewer debris objects and satellite constellations below 500 kilometres “Correspondingly, the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision,” Nicolls said.
While Starlink says its satellites are highly reliable, the company still wants to reduce risk as much as possible. “Starlink satellites have extremely high reliability, with only 2 dead satellites in its fleet of over 9,000 operational satellites,” Nicolls said. “Nevertheless, if a satellite does fail on orbit, we want it to deorbit as quickly as possible.”
Nicolls added that the changes are meant to protect against risks Starlink cannot fully control. “These actions will further improve the safety of the constellation, particularly with difficult to control risks such as uncoordinated maneuvers and launches by other satellite operators,” he said.
Lowering Starlink satellites will slightly reduce latency because signals travel a shorter distance, but the improvement will likely be only a few milliseconds. The change is mainly about improving space safety and faster deorbiting, not noticeably faster internet speeds for most users.
The most recent issue involved a Starlink satellite that malfunctioned last month (contact was lost on Dec. 17), began tumbling in orbit after an anomaly, and is expected to burn up during an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
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