SpaceX to do a major orbital reconfiguration of its Starlink constellation
According to a X post yesterday by Michael Nicholls, SpaceX’s Starlink engineering vice-president, the company over the next year will be lowering the orbits of more than 4,000 satellites in its Starlink constellation, in order to allow the company to more quickly de-orbit them if they fail.
We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM.
Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways. As solar mininum approaches, atmospheric density decreases which means the ballistic decay time at any given altitude increases – lowering will mean a >80% reduction in ballistic decay time in solar minimum, or 4+ years reduced to a few months. Correspondingly, the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision.
Nicholls notes that it presently has only two dead satellites in the present fleet of 9,000 satellites, but decided to do this move regardless, as it also apparently will reduce collision risks with other satellites as well.
Not surprisingly, China’s state-run press and our anti-capitalism propaganda press immediately tried to give China credit for this change, while lambasting SpaceX. That China is contributing to the risk of collision with its own multiple giant satellite constellations and is doing nothing on its own is apparently irrelevant to both. Our nice of them.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to a X post yesterday by Michael Nicholls, SpaceX’s Starlink engineering vice-president, the company over the next year will be lowering the orbits of more than 4,000 satellites in its Starlink constellation, in order to allow the company to more quickly de-orbit them if they fail.
We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM.
Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways. As solar mininum approaches, atmospheric density decreases which means the ballistic decay time at any given altitude increases – lowering will mean a >80% reduction in ballistic decay time in solar minimum, or 4+ years reduced to a few months. Correspondingly, the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision.
Nicholls notes that it presently has only two dead satellites in the present fleet of 9,000 satellites, but decided to do this move regardless, as it also apparently will reduce collision risks with other satellites as well.
Not surprisingly, China’s state-run press and our anti-capitalism propaganda press immediately tried to give China credit for this change, while lambasting SpaceX. That China is contributing to the risk of collision with its own multiple giant satellite constellations and is doing nothing on its own is apparently irrelevant to both. Our nice of them.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
While not knowing what impacted the particular Starlink satellite, as we get so many satellites in orbit, especially for these communications network, the possibility of a meteor striking a satellite increases. It wouldn’t take a very large object to disable a satellite.
I think the Chinese negative comments stem from them not being able to dominate LEO with their communications satellites without having to take responsibility for the orbit they are in. That recent near collision between a Chinese satellite and a Starlink satellite shows the Chinese amount of concern (very little).
Give them time.
This isn’t about economics with them anymore… Russians and the Chinese love their countries like Americans used to. They love their militaries.
I have seen some of their recruitment videos.
In the US, kids love Pokemon.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/may/21/army-disables-crush-critical-comments-woke-recruit/
I am going to be sick
Jeff Wright,
The PRC doesn’t have much time.
I’ve seen our recruitment ads too. It’s the job of recruitment ads to be rah-rah about a nation’s military. Don’t confuse the message with the normative attitude of the demographic the message is being aimed at.
Military-age Russian males “love their country” so much that over a million of them have fled elsewhere since 2022 to avoid becoming road kill in Ukraine.
Nor are young people in the PRC – what few of them there are – uniformly flag-wavers and Winnie the Pooh worshipers. More than half of them are unemployed, for example. You might want to use “lie-flat movement” and “last generation movement” as predicates in your favored search engine.
Meanwhile, those kids who liked Pokemon when they were tots have grown up and are now joining the US armed forces in numbers sufficient to entirely erase the yawning recruitment shortfalls of the Biden era woke military.
You have been predicting China’s demise for awhile now.
Not that I would shed the first tear.
Stability is the hallmark of the Asian mind… stability is more important than justice to them.
I think China may outlive us both.
That having been said…my guess is that China’s space efforts will take a hit., in that–as time goes on–they will spawn clones of Rickover and LeMay who will go after it…a repeat of what happened to the ABMA. The went from bicycles to carriers in my lifetime.
The big quake in 1976 set them back. With Mao dead and no earthquake that same year—they might have taken a lead.
I was reading AIR&SPACE SMITHSONIAN once, where an older American was teaching them how to restore a goony bird.
I don’t remember a line from that issue….the photographs of the crew impressed me.
In Birmingham, we have the Southern Museum of Flight.
Once while I was there, some disinterested kids were milling about… Boy Scouts mind you. (trying to earn a merit badge).
The faces of the Chinese had an intensity that spooked me.
Read here about how 250 sets of ears hung on every word;
https://www.discovermagazine.com/discover-interview-the-worlds-most-celebrated-virus-hunter-ian-lipkin-17193
The speed with which they responded impressed me.