SpaceX's Next-Gen Starlink Satellites Have Started Falling from Space | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX's Next-Gen Starlink Satellites Have Started Falling from Space

gizmodo.com

29 pointstalboren15 comments

Pretty click-bait article. Headline and first paragraph make it sound like they are deorbiting due to a propulsion failure, but the rest clarifies that they are intentionally deorbiting in a controlled manner.

Yeah. The satellite failed to orbit so they basically instructed it to disintegrate in the atmosphere as safely as possible.

yeah.. so I wouldn't say "intentionally", just sounds like something went wrong and they have this fail-safe mechanism that makes it "okay"

well.. it got my attention and had me thinking how's something like that just goes silently "under the radar"

They were test articles for the next gen, mini-v2's, only some of them had issues and were intentionally deorbited. Others will be elevated to intended orbits and continue to validate the many new technologies onboard

wonder if this is somehow regulated or anybody with sufficient resources can just do these tests? what happens if it doesn't get burned when returning to the atmosphere?

The FCC is the relevant regulator. Starlinks are designed to burn up completely[1].

We've come a long way since the days of nuclear reactor re-entry[2] oopsies.

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/spacex-claims-to-have-redesigned-i...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954

> The FCC is the relevant regulator. Starlinks are designed to burn up completely[1].

> We've come a long way since the days of nuclear reactor re-entry[2] oopsies.

Kosmos 954 was a Soviet satellite. The FCC only has jurisdiction over private US satellites. I'm not sure why you are connecting them. If China/India/Russia/etc want to risk another "nuclear reactor re-entry oopsie", that is completely out of the FCC's hands. It would probably even be out of the FCC's hands if some other US government agency (NASA or DOD or DOE) wanted to risk it.

Yes, that was unrelated to the FCC. It was just something that popped into my mind as an example of something that was orders of magnitudes more problematic than a starlink re-entry.

hope that's true ^^'

completely burned up reactor/battery or not, it's still radioactive waste.

If it’s completely burned when entering the atmosphere, is it really?

Yes, because combustion is a chemical process. The radioactive atoms are still there, just as many as if it hadn't burned.

The FCC regulates US satellites, besides military, iirc. They are designed to disintegrate, returning orbital velocity is quite catastrophic. It's harder to design something to survive

TIL

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