SpaceX Satellites Fall from Sky

Guys …. The news was alive with the embarrassing sight of dozens of bright meteorites that used to be brand new SpaceX Starlink spacecraft reentering the atmosphere over Puerto Rico. The headlines read: SpaceX Satellites Fall From Sky.” Definitely a “Chicken Little” moment for SpaceX.

In reality, this was the result of a really bizarre coincidence of spaceflight risks. As I understand it, a batch of 49 new Starlink birds was, as usual, temporarily parked in a very low Earth orbit awaiting final assignments to operational slots in much higher altitude orbits. SpaceX also does a final in-space check-up on each bird and can easily and safely deo-rbit any clunkers. Viable spacecraft remain in that low orbit until they are in just the right position to be propelled to their intended orbital station with the absolute minimum use of fuel. The fuel they save extends their mission life.

Then the Sun went batshit and a "geomagnetic storm” disgorged giga tons of particles that hit our upper atmosphere and made it warm and swell just enough make that really low orbit no longer tenable. SpaceX tried to save their vulnerable spacecraft by commanding them to fly "thin-edge-forward" into the suddenly higher density atmosphere, sort of like "feathering" a propeller engine to reduce drag. It helped, they didn’t loose the whole batch, but 40 slowed down enough to spectacularly re-enter the atmosphere.

Critics inside the space industry point out that SpaceX knew a solar flare was brewing and should have waited until until they got an all clear from the Solar Atmospheric Physics community to launch that batch.