Another Starlink satellite has inexplicably exploded keeps showing up in conversations for a reason. The story below covers what is actually happening, where the trade-offs sit, and what a careful reader should take from it.
SpaceX says it lost contact with a Starlink satellite after suffering an “anomaly.” SpaceX isn’t saying exactly what happened, but space-tracking company LeoLabs says it “immediately detected tens of objects in the vicinity” of Starlink 34343 after the event.
“Latest analysis shows the event poses no new risk to the @Space_Station, its crew, or to the upcoming launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission,” says SpaceX in a message posted to X. “We will continue to monitor the satellite along with any trackable debris and coordinate with @NASA and the @USSpaceForce.”
The satellite and fragments are expected to burn up in the atmosphere within a few weeks. SpaceX says it is working to determine the root cause.
The latest mishap occurred at about 560km above the Earth, an increasingly crowded area known as low Earth orbit where over 24,000 objects, including debris and about 10,000 Starlink satellites, are currently being tracked.
In January, SpaceX requested approval from the FCC for “up to one million satellites” to create orbital data centers. “We just recently gave a request for FCC licensing of up to a million AI satellites,” said SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell in a recent Time profile. “I’m surprised that didn’t get more news. I thought for sure that would get a lot of news.”
