So remember how a few days ago I shared this official Starlink document that just casually mentions that they found a piece of a Starlink satellite on a farm in Saskatchewan? https://www.starlink.com/public-files/Starlink_Approach_to_Satellite_Demisability.pdf
I had really convinced myself it must be some kind of chatgpt gobbledygook. But... a reliable source confirmed that this really happened.
SpaceX dropped potentially lethal debris from TWO DIFFERENT SPACECRAFT onto Saskatchewan within 6 months. And as far as I can tell, they just waltzed in and picked up the second piece without anyone official knowing about it. This is a very big problem for a lot of obvious legal reasons.
It mostly terrifies me because there are 7,000 Starlinks, and if each one leaves behind debris after demise, that's... a lot.
Why Saskatchewan?
1) It's big, and flat, and a large percentage of the area is monoculture crops in giant fields, that get driven over by giant machines twice a year. The first spacecraft pieces were found at seeding time, the second at harvest.
2) Due to the orbits that have been chosen and simple geometry, we're under the densest band of satellites. (This is true everywhere ~50-54 latitude N and S)
It's not necessarily that we're getting hit by more, just finding them 😬
So...this is pretty obviously a very big problem.
First news article about it is here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2472334-starlink-satellite-part-hit-a-canadian-farm-when-it-fell-from-orbit/
(of COURSE it ends with "SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment")
Non-paywalled version: https://archive.ph/5ZljY
Hoping a few more journalists will want to write about this, and hopefully that will nudge some people in the Canadian government to be more concerned about an American billionaire dropping potentially lethal junk on us?
@sundogplanets He's Canadian and South African too. He has multiple nationalities, and personalities. He is an evil person and astronomically speaking, a polluter.
If Starlink does nothing else, it should wake up the space community to create regulations for the launch, maintenance, and destruction of satellites.
Um.
Netherlands: 52 N
Right in the zone.
Very high population density.
@michael_w_busch @sundogplanets
Oh my.
They said "as big as a pickup truck" and here is the visual.
(And that's only part of it too)
Exactly… if a piece of a satellite were to drop 50 km easy of Red Lake ON, who would find it amongst the scrub forest and muskeg?
..*at least* two different spacecraft...
@sundogplanets
Let's take Starlink and SpaceX down !
#fun #party #laugh #conviviality
#TakeDownStarlink #TakeDownSpaceX
@sundogplanets
Most people think satellites burn up completely in orbit. They mostly do, but sometimes pieces make landfall. That's obviously a problem. But the aluminum and other toxic materials that burn up are also a problem.
There has to be a solution, and we need to force aerospace companies to find and adopt them.
Government spacecraft have the same problems. Whether or not private companies should be launching spacecraft is a separate issue.
@sundogplanets
Breaking news : Starlink debris alleged to be the origin of recent Los Angeles winter fires.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/california-wildfires-los-angeles-weather/?id=117613594
There are more yet to be discovered.
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