Space Debris Heading for Earth: Elon Musk’s 20 Starlink Satellites Falling, Released in Wrong Orbit
A shower of space debris is headed toward planet Earth . All 20 satellites in the Starlink constellation are on their way – owned by SpaceX for global internet connections – which were released into the wrong orbit on July 12 due to a fault in the upper-stage engine of the Falcon 9 launcher , also from Elon Musk ‘s company . Of the 20 released, 2 have already re-entered as indicated by information and data from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD): the remaining 18 are expected to re-enter the atmosphere in the next few hours . The suspicion (developed by astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell , of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), however, is that they have already re-entered without having been catalogued . Some fragments have been spotted in the skies of Chile and Argentina , as reported by some witnesses on X.
In any case, there is no alarm and no risk of any kind is foreseen.
Not just the 20 Starlink satellites
Not just Starlink. In the meantime, the large Cygnus cargo ship from Northrop Grumman , which ended its mission on the International Space Station for NASA, is re-entering in a controlled manner (the fragments will fall in unpopulated places like the Pacific Ocean). In an uncontrolled manner in northern Thailand , instead , the upper stage of the Chinese Long March launcher re-entered. Descending towards the atmosphere, in a controlled reentry, the Cygnus cargo ship from Northrop Grumman was released from the Space Station on July 12 at the end of its mission for NASA.
The expert speaks
Will the 20 Starlinks reach the Earth’s atmosphere all at once ? “Plausible, because when these satellites are placed in the wrong orbit, the procedure to follow, already applied for the same reasons in the past, is to make them re-enter as soon as possible ” declared the space dynamics expert Luciano Anselmo – of the Institute of Information Science and Technologies of the National Research Council – to the microphones of Ansa . “Currently, controlled re-entry is not prescribed because SpaceX certifies to the American regulatory authorities that the risk is below the attention threshold of one victim in 10,000”. Since the beginning of 2024, the most followed re-entries have been those of Peregrine , the probe of the American company Astrobotic that should have reached , according to plan, the Moon but due to a technical problem was forced to turn back on January 18, with an impact in the atmosphere that occurred in the skies of the Pacific. In February (on the 21st), it was the turn of the uncontrolled re-entry of the European Earth observation satellite Ers-2 , again over the Pacific (but in the North), between Alaska and Hawaii .
