• kibiz0r@midwest.social
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    24 hours ago

    I’ve heard that before. But the main point of the paper is that drag is decreasing. So I’m curious to know how that impacts the stability of Starlink going forward. I doubt they have new figures after one day.

    • Dave.@aussie.zone
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      7 hours ago

      They aim to actively deorbit starlink sats.

      (Edit: they keep a small amount of propellant in reserve for the initial deorbit burn, and then position the solar array to give maximum drag which hastens things considerably)

      As far as I know, apart from the first few batches, the “production run” of sats has a pretty low failure rate and are proactively sent to their demise.