I hate seeing the star link satellites in the sky. Shouldn’t there be some sort of law about how much garbage some company can put up there? How long do these things even last and how long until the technology is outdated or obsolete?
It’s actually pretty well understood that a starlink satellite’s life span is approx. 5 years at which point it is intentionally deorbited, and any malfunctioning satellite’s orbit would naturally decay within a few years as well.
That being said, I agree that there should be regulations about this. Feels like we’re in a bit of a wild west situation.
Starlinks are good to passively deorbit from around 500 something km, but Amazon is higher at around 600km, Oneweb out at 1200km, Gouwong with a shell at 1100km, SDA at 900+… I’m more worried about the other ones with less experience that could die and stay up there.
I hate seeing the star link satellites in the sky. Shouldn’t there be some sort of law about how much garbage some company can put up there? How long do these things even last and how long until the technology is outdated or obsolete?
It’s actually pretty well understood that a starlink satellite’s life span is approx. 5 years at which point it is intentionally deorbited, and any malfunctioning satellite’s orbit would naturally decay within a few years as well.
That being said, I agree that there should be regulations about this. Feels like we’re in a bit of a wild west situation.
Starlinks are good to passively deorbit from around 500 something km, but Amazon is higher at around 600km, Oneweb out at 1200km, Gouwong with a shell at 1100km, SDA at 900+… I’m more worried about the other ones with less experience that could die and stay up there.