During 2026, the satellite firm will move about 4,400 satellites from an orbit of 550km above the Earth to 480km
Starlink will progressively lower the orbit of thousands of its satellites this year due to safety concerns. About 4,400 satellites that are orbiting at 550km above Earth will move to an orbiting height of 480km during 2026, according to a post on X by Michael Nicholls, SpaceX’s VP of Engineering.
He said the lower orbit would shorten the period of “ballistic decay time in solar minimum” at the end of the satellites’ life by more than 80%, from “4+ years reduced to a few months” – that is the amount of time it takes for an object in low-Earth orbit (LEO) to fall back to Earth naturally and burn up in the atmosphere during a period of low solar activity.
LEO is defined as altitudes less than 2,000km from Earth’s surface.
Also, fewer satellites operate at an altitude of below 500km, reducing the risk of collisions. This includes what he described as “uncoordinated maneuvers and launches by other satellite operators”. Last July, Hugh Lewis, a professor of aeronautics at the University of Birmingham, wrote in a blog on LinkedIn that SpaceX did 144,404 manoeuvres to mitigate risk between December 2024 to May 2025. He pointed out that this was a 200% increase compared with the prior six months.
Loss of communication
It seems SpaceX’s the decision to reconfigure its constellation was triggered by an unusual incident on 17 December when “an anomaly on satellite 35956, resulting in loss of communications with the vehicle at 418 km. The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects”.
The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates there are 40,000 objects in LEO. SpaceX has launched more than 10,000 satellites although not all of them are in operation, according to astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell who tracks them.
