> SpaceX is deorbiting about one or two satellites daily, and that number is only going to grow.
> What that means for our planet isn't entirely clear
100 tons of meteors hit Earth every day[1], so it seems fairly clear the 800kg Starlink v2 mini satellites[2] don't amount to much. Maybe once a dozen providers are deorbiting a similar amount of mass daily, we might notice. But even then I'm not sure there would be any negative effects. This seems like clickbait scare mongering at the moment.
At least 1.4% of Earth is aluminum. Meteors will have similar composition on average. Aluminum smelting likely vaporizes a much larger volume of material.
I think probably means SpaceX will need to keep sending rockets at rate of 1 or 2 satellites per day to replenish the infra. How much impact sending 800kg satellite into low orbit has?
An additional tidbit: this is not enough mass to offset the amount of helium and hydrogen which escapes Earth's atmosphere daily. Earth is on net losing mass. Eventually, Earth will lose all the hydrogen locked in it's oceans via this process. Not sure if that's destined to happen before or after we're engulfed by the expanding sun though.
Well that's bad news for all the infrastructure projects in my current city and country. They're gonna run out of hydrogen before our subway extension is finished.
Meteors contain various heavy metals, primarily iron and nickel, which form metallic cores of asteroids and make up the bulk of many meteorites.
They also contain other siderophilic metals, including cobalt, chromium, gold, platinum, iridium, and tungsten. The high concentration of these metals, especially precious metals like gold and platinum, is due to their affinity for sinking to the core of early planets and asteroids, which are remnants of the primordial solar system.
Further, satellites like Starlink's are engineered to burn up on re-entry. Meaning that they are manufactured of materials known to combust at re-entry velocities in thicknesses and shapes appropriate to that end.
One key difference is the satellites have a lot of aluminum - a light element - while meteors do not.
Estimates I've seen are that the amount of Al in the upper atmosphere will be dominated by satellite demise. And we don't know how that will affect things.
The history of CFC and the ozone layer suggest caution.
> The current strategy to de-orbit Starlink satellites, which operate in a low orbit below 600 kilometers, is to use the satellites' thrusters to move them to such a low orbit that they eventually catch drag in the atmosphere and burn up in what McDowell calls an "uncontrolled but assisted" reentry.
This is misleading, they're already in a very low orbit and would deorbit on their own in a just few years. They can manoeuver to explicitly deorbit on command, but they need active stationkeeping to stay up there for extended periods.
Simplistically this is likely very true, if they have only 10m customers, that's like 12 billion a year. They can easily launch 12 times a year with 60 per launch, that's 720 replacements a year. Each launch is about 15m, so just replacing them each month they are spending 15m out of the 1b profit. Not bad.
And that's if they only have 10m customers - which I suspect is a lot more considering it's a worldwide service.
It matters because it helps the "Elon Bad" storyline, that seems to be the connecting thread between all these "reports" whether about SpaceX or Tesla by some news outlets which dont even do the due diligence of putting the stories into any kind of perspective or try to find out if the implied premise of the headline is true or should even matter to the casual reader.
I found this one weird trick. I select key words in an article and use an internet search to answer probing questions like 'why this matters'.
For example: Near the top of the article is the sentence: "Kessler syndrome is bad; atmospheric incineration may be worse, says astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell"
When have we given up on expecting journalists to do their jobs and write articles worthy of being read and containing actual information? If I wanted to read blubberish I'd go read some AI slop but if an article is written by a human I have some base expectation of it providing a modicum of value to me. Even more so if it reaches the HN frontpage.
> SpaceX is deorbiting about one or two satellites daily, and that number is only going to grow.
> What that means for our planet isn't entirely clear
100 tons of meteors hit Earth every day[1], so it seems fairly clear the 800kg Starlink v2 mini satellites[2] don't amount to much. Maybe once a dozen providers are deorbiting a similar amount of mass daily, we might notice. But even then I'm not sure there would be any negative effects. This seems like clickbait scare mongering at the moment.
1: https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/astronomybc/chapter/14-1-m...
2: https://dishycentral.com/how-big-are-starlink-satellites
It’s closer to 43+-14 tons and most of that is cosmic dust [1] and most of that is under a millimeter in size [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_dust
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X2...
but those 100 tons do not contain that much aluminum. I remember a story where the aluminum aerosols may have a strong effect https://cires.colorado.edu/news/within-15-years-plummeting-s...
At least 1.4% of Earth is aluminum. Meteors will have similar composition on average. Aluminum smelting likely vaporizes a much larger volume of material.
I think probably means SpaceX will need to keep sending rockets at rate of 1 or 2 satellites per day to replenish the infra. How much impact sending 800kg satellite into low orbit has?
(in batches, obviously)
I had no idea 100 tons of external material was entering our atmosphere each day. Fascinating.
An additional tidbit: this is not enough mass to offset the amount of helium and hydrogen which escapes Earth's atmosphere daily. Earth is on net losing mass. Eventually, Earth will lose all the hydrogen locked in it's oceans via this process. Not sure if that's destined to happen before or after we're engulfed by the expanding sun though.
At the current rate of loss Earth has 150 billion years worth of hydrogen.
Well that's bad news for all the infrastructure projects in my current city and country. They're gonna run out of hydrogen before our subway extension is finished.
The composition is different though. In particular, these satellites probably have more heavy elements for things like batteries and electronics
Meteors contain various heavy metals, primarily iron and nickel, which form metallic cores of asteroids and make up the bulk of many meteorites.
They also contain other siderophilic metals, including cobalt, chromium, gold, platinum, iridium, and tungsten. The high concentration of these metals, especially precious metals like gold and platinum, is due to their affinity for sinking to the core of early planets and asteroids, which are remnants of the primordial solar system.
Further, satellites like Starlink's are engineered to burn up on re-entry. Meaning that they are manufactured of materials known to combust at re-entry velocities in thicknesses and shapes appropriate to that end.
One key difference is the satellites have a lot of aluminum - a light element - while meteors do not.
Estimates I've seen are that the amount of Al in the upper atmosphere will be dominated by satellite demise. And we don't know how that will affect things.
The history of CFC and the ozone layer suggest caution.
> The typical meteor is produced by a particle with a mass of less than 1 gram—no larger than a pea
> The total mass of meteoric material entering Earth’s atmosphere is estimated to be about 100 tons per day
... yes? Does the mass of individual meteors or satellites matter if they both burn up on [re]entry?
On average, something like 17 meteors large enough to strike the ground hit earth daily.
Three days ago:
One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45493143 - 6 Oct 2025 (336 comments)
> The current strategy to de-orbit Starlink satellites, which operate in a low orbit below 600 kilometers, is to use the satellites' thrusters to move them to such a low orbit that they eventually catch drag in the atmosphere and burn up in what McDowell calls an "uncontrolled but assisted" reentry.
This is misleading, they're already in a very low orbit and would deorbit on their own in a just few years. They can manoeuver to explicitly deorbit on command, but they need active stationkeeping to stay up there for extended periods.
Yeah, I thought this was a 'feature' (basically a hedge against them contributing to Kessler syndrome).
I think the question to ask would be about the cost of maintaining that fleet.
Cost of building + launch, per satellite, any ideas?
How much is Elon _actually_ burning here? Is Starlink going to have a positive ROI at some point?
Starlink is crazy profitable. Source: Son has SpaceX stock and sees the audited financial reports in a locked room in Redmond.
Simplistically this is likely very true, if they have only 10m customers, that's like 12 billion a year. They can easily launch 12 times a year with 60 per launch, that's 720 replacements a year. Each launch is about 15m, so just replacing them each month they are spending 15m out of the 1b profit. Not bad.
And that's if they only have 10m customers - which I suspect is a lot more considering it's a worldwide service.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45493143
I was disappointed to learn approximately nothing from this article about why this matters.
It matters because it helps the "Elon Bad" storyline, that seems to be the connecting thread between all these "reports" whether about SpaceX or Tesla by some news outlets which dont even do the due diligence of putting the stories into any kind of perspective or try to find out if the implied premise of the headline is true or should even matter to the casual reader.
I found this one weird trick. I select key words in an article and use an internet search to answer probing questions like 'why this matters'.
For example: Near the top of the article is the sentence: "Kessler syndrome is bad; atmospheric incineration may be worse, says astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell"
So, I searched for "kessler syndrome". Here's the hyperlink for reference: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=kessler+syndrome&ia=web
Now here is the cool part. I found a Wikipedia article about "kessler syndrome" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome and it explained why this matters!
When have we given up on expecting journalists to do their jobs and write articles worthy of being read and containing actual information? If I wanted to read blubberish I'd go read some AI slop but if an article is written by a human I have some base expectation of it providing a modicum of value to me. Even more so if it reaches the HN frontpage.
edit: removed my own snark. sorry for that.
Based on the previous discussion, it releases pollution that may or may not matter.