{"id":223326,"date":"2026-01-02T11:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T11:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/223326\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T11:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T11:19:07","slug":"spacex-will-lower-starlink-satellites-to-reduce-collision-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/223326\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX will lower Starlink satellites to reduce collision risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">Of the over 9,000 Starlink satellites currently operating in low Earth orbit, SpaceX says it\u2019ll lower about 4,400 from 550km above the Earth\u2019s surface to about 480km in the months ahead. This ensures the satellites deorbit faster when something goes wrong or when they reach end of life, and it also reduces the likelihood of collision since \u201cthe number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500km,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/michaelnicollsx\/status\/2006790372681220530?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">wrote Michael Nicolls<\/a>, VP of Starlink Engineering.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">By the end of this decade, there could be as many as 70,000 satellites operating in low Earth orbit \u2014 the region of space about 160km to 2,000km (100 to 1,200 miles) above the Earth \u2014 if private and government-led efforts <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/column\/837202\/starlink-work-from-home\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">meet their targets<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1ymtmqpi _17nnmdy1 _17nnmdy0 _1xwtict1\">SpaceX had another <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Starlink\/status\/2006494883322921315?s=20\" rel=\"nofollow\">record-setting year<\/a> in 2025. It conducted over 160 Falcon 9 missions, with more than 120 of them dedicated to expanding the Starlink constellation. Starlink now serves 9.25 million active customers in over 155 countries, markets, and territories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of the over 9,000 Starlink satellites currently operating in low Earth orbit, SpaceX says it\u2019ll lower about 4,400&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,43,82,247,2306],"class_list":{"0":"post-223326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-spacex"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}