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SpaceX Says 4,400 \u201cStar Chain\u201d Satellites Will Drop to Orbit This Year, Provoking Discontent among Astronomers from All Countries
\nBy the end of 2025, the number of \u201cStar Chain\u201d Internet satellites in orbit by the U.S. space exploration technology company (SpaceX) had approached 10,000, causing growing controversy. The U.S. \u201cSpace\u201d website said on January 2 that the company announced that for \u201csafety reasons,\u201d it would reduce the current 4,400 \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellites operating at a distance of 550 kilometers from the ground to about 480 kilometers in 2026. This move also caused dissatisfaction among astronomers from various countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cStar Chain is undergoing a major restructuring of its satellite constellations, with a focus on improving space safety,\u201d the report said on January 1 on social media platform X. According to Nichols, this move will reduce the time it takes for a defective satellite to burn out in the Earth\u2018s atmosphere and reduce the \u201cprobability\u201d of collisions with other satellites and space debris.<\/p>\n
According to SpaceX\u2018s plan, if the \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellite fails or is retired, it will gradually lower its altitude due to the thin air resistance in its operating orbit, eventually returning to the atmosphere within a few months and burning itself out. However, as solar activity shifts from its current peak of activity to a very low minimum period (around 2030), the air resistance in near-Earth orbit decreases, which also means that the \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellite will take longer to return to the atmosphere. Nichols said that, due to the minimum period, the satellite may take more than four years to return to the atmosphere from an orbital altitude of 550 kilometers. If it chooses lower orbits, the process takes only a few months.<\/p>\n
Nichols also said, \u201cThese measures will further improve the safety of the constellation, especially in dealing with uncontrollable risks, such as uncoordinated maneuvers and launches by other satellite operators.\u201d The U.S. \u201cbusiness insider\u201d website noted that last December, SpaceX reported that a \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellite brushed past nine Chinese satellites and nearly collided. The company also reported that another \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellite was suspected to have exploded late last year and released a small amount of \u201ctraceable low-relative velocity objects\u201d in orbit. Hong Kong\u2018s South China Morning Post reported on January 2 that the Chinese representative spoke at a meeting of the UN Security Council last December, saying that the unbridled expansion of the commercial satellite constellations of individual countries, lacking effective regulation, poses obvious security challenges. \u201cTake \u2018Star Chain\u2019 as an example. Its orbiting satellites severely overcrowd orbital resources, increasing the risk of spacecraft collisions and creating space debris.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the European Space Agency\u2018s monitoring data, by the end of 2025, more than 14,000 satellites from around the world were operating in different altitude orbits around the Earth. In particular, near-Earth orbits are becoming increasingly crowded, with \u201cStar Chains\u201d being the main reason: about two-thirds of the orbiting satellites belong to \u201cStar Chains\u201d Internet satellites. Related statistics show that SpaceX has about 9,400 orbiting satellites, including more than 8,000 already operational \u201cStar Chains\u201d satellites, as well as hundreds of satellites being tested and waiting to be activated. This situation has raised concerns about the risk of satellite collisions and could increase the number of massive debris in orbit. The European Space Agency estimates that there are approximately 1.2 million pieces of space between 0.4 inches (1 inch is about 2.54 centimeters) and 4 inches in orbit, all of which are orbiting the Earth at speeds of 17,000 miles per hour (1 mile is about 1.6 kilometers), potentially causing damage to satellites and manned space launches.<\/p>\n
Nichols said that although lowering the operational altitude of the 4,400 \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellites to lower orbits would cause their distances to get closer to each other, the effect \u201ccontrary to people\u2018s intuition, would reduce the risk of collisions\u201d. He explained that because there are fewer satellites and space fragments in lower orbits, although the \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellites are arranged more densely, they follow pre-arranged operational paths distributed across dozens of orbits, which can reduce the probability of safety accidents.<\/p>\n
In addition to this, SpaceX has other plans — making the satellites operate at higher altitudes closer to the ground will slightly improve latency, that is, reduce the time required for internet signals to travel between the transmitter and receiver, thereby improving the online experience for Star Chain users. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk says this is actually the \u201cgreatest advantage\u201d of reducing the operational altitude of Star Chain satellites. He writes on social media platform X: \u201cWith the same antenna size, the beam diameter is smaller, which allows Star Chain to serve higher density users.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, this move was also opposed by astronomers from various countries. This was because dense \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellites would form bright light streaks when moving through the night sky, directly destroying long-exposed deep-space images, thereby affecting astronomers\u2018 observations of the starry sky. And lower orbital altitudes would make the \u201cStar Chain\u201d satellites appear brighter in the sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SpaceX Says 4,400 \u201cStar Chain\u201d Satellites Will Drop to Orbit This Year, Provoking Discontent among Astronomers from All Countries By the end of 2025, the number of \u201cStar Chain\u201d Internet… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[249,257],"tags":[4035,4037,2443,4036],"views":51,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7687,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7685\/revisions\/7687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}