SpaceX says it has lost control of a Starlink satellite that is now falling to Earth after suffering an anomaly. The sudden loss of communications, loss of altitude, “the presence of a propulsion tank,” and “the release of a very small number of low relative velocity objects,” suggest that the anomaly was some sort of explosion. SpaceX says the ISS crew is in no danger and will “burn up in the atmosphere within weeks.”
Space tracking company Leo Labs says what happened to Starlink 35956 was likely caused by an “internal energetic source,” not a collision. Its radar network detected “tens of objects” around the satellite after the event.
The event occurred at 418 km (260 mi), an increasingly crowded region known as low-Earth orbit where more than 24,000 objects, including satellites and debris, are currently being tracked.
By the end of this decade, as many as 70,000 satellites could be operating in the same region, most of them in service of space internet bridges such as Starlink, being launched by private and public organizations in the US, China and Europe. Such density not only creates problems for astronomers, but also increases the odds of collisions that could, in theory, spiral out of control.
