Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

Roughly 4 to 5 Starlink LEO Broadband Satellites Now Burning Up Per Day

Monday, Feb 3rd, 2025 (10:17 am) - Score 37,640
Starlink-satellites-in-orbit-around-the-earth

Data released by an independent researcher has revealed that SpaceX appears to now be “retiring and incinerating” about 4 or 5 Starlink broadband satellites from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) every day, which is up sharply from before May 2024, when the average was closer to just one per day. But the exact reason for this seeming mass retirement surge remains unclear.

At present Starlink’s network has almost 7,000 satellites in orbit (c.2,800 are v2 Mini / GEN 2A) – mostly at altitudes of c.500-600km – and they’re in the process of adding thousands more by the end of 2027. Customers in the UK typically pay from £75 a month for a 30-day term, plus £299 for hardware on the ‘Standard’ unlimited data plan (inc. £19 postage), which promises latency times of 25-60ms, downloads of c. 25-100Mbps and uploads of c. 5-10Mbps.

NOTE: By the end of 2024 Starlink’s global network had 4.6 million customers (up from 2.3m in 2023) and 87,000 of those were in the UK (up from 42,000 in 2023) – mostly in rural areas.

However, according to data from Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who tracks orbiting satellites, SpaceX de-orbited a total 87 Starlink satellites during January 2025 alone and this follows a surge in similar activity over recent months. Just to put this in context, SpaceX said last year that they had the capacity to build up to 55 satellites per week and launch more than 200 per month.

Advertisement

The “reentry rate was mostly low until May 2024, then increased to one to two per day as SpaceX started some mass retirements. A second batch of retirements started in December at a rate of three to four per day,” he told PCMag. “Of 7,821 Starlinks launched (so far), 817 have been retired to reentry, including some that failed at birth” (over 500 of these were first generation [GEN] satellites).

The first thing to understand here is that smaller LEO satellites, such as those from operators like Starlink, OneWeb (Eutelsat), Amazon (Kuiper) and others, are designed to have a relatively short lifespan (e.g. Starlinks last for 5 years) – they’re like really expensive consumables. After that they will be directed back down by operators to burn up (incinerate), harmlessly, in our atmosphere.

Similarly, if they suffer a total failure, then the pull of gravity and atmospheric drag will ultimately de-orbit them naturally over a period of “5 years or less, depending on the altitude and satellite design,” says Starlink’s website (or within 6 months if operators can still command the thruster).

Suffice to say that, given the rise in launch rates over recent years, it is inevitable that Starlink will suffer a notable rise in retirements as the years roll by. But quite why we’ve seen such a sudden surge isn’t so clear, and it certainly won’t help the cost to benefit ratio of the network to have so many failings, often well before their designed lifetime has been reached.

Advertisement

The company has, on occasion, also had to retire large batches of Starlinks that failed at birth (e.g. being placed into the wrong orbit) or after they failed for other reasons (e.g. hardware malfunctions, disrupted by extreme solar storms etc.). Starlink can of course then replace these with more modern platforms.

In a letter to the US FCC last month, the company also said: “SpaceX proactively deorbits satellites before large issues develop based on detailed engineering analysis of the likelihood of critical system failures. SpaceX takes this costly approach out of an abundance of caution to best preserve and protect low Earth orbit.” The company confirmed, at the time, that they deorbited 149 satellites between June and November 2024.

Sadly, Starlink has not responded to requests for comment on the latest retirement trend, but it’s likely to be in keeping with the above reasons. Burning up such small satellites generally poses no direct risk to humans on the ground, although in recent months there have been some concerns raised about the potential impact on the ozone layer of vaporized metals. Astronomers have called on US regulators and senators to probe this, which might face some challenges in the current political environment.

Share with Twitter
Share with Linkedin
Share with Facebook
Share with Reddit
Share with Pinterest
Tags:
Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews
Comments
18 Responses

Advertisement

  1. Avatar photo Lolol says:

    Yet we still have to pay ULEZ

    1. Avatar photo Ben says:

      I don’t think de-orbited Starlink satellites impact local air quality in UK cities.

    2. Avatar photo John says:

      Neither does paying Sadiq Khan

    3. Avatar photo Ben says:

      Except it does, John. Because the tax discourages people from driving high emissions vehicles into cities. Which is what it was designed to do.

    4. Avatar photo John says:

      No it does not. If you are too poor to upgrade your car, you certainly cannot afford to miss working

      The only thing it was designed for was to rip off the people. If Sadiq Khan actually cared about “emissions” then he wouldn’t be on his chugging range rover with a huge entourage daily just to walk his dogs

    5. Avatar photo 125us says:

      The evidence says it does John. And poor people? They don’t own cars but they do have the breathe the air that the wealthy pollute.

    6. Avatar photo Sam says:

      What data? The one cooked by Sadiq?

      It’s really insane that leftists believe paying money to the government changes the weather. No wonder Canadians are eating a 20% “carbon tax” but the media brainwashes them that the US wanting to protect its industries is bad

      Also John is right. The poor are the ones who can’t upgrade their car. A car is not not a luxury in pretty much every other place in the world, it should not be prohibitively expensive. Especially when public transport is so unsafe and unreliable

  2. Avatar photo Lonpfrb says:

    So the harmless incineration is a marketing concept not proven to be true, though convenient for investors not to spend any money on..
    Clearly all operators have a shared interest in keeping the LEO region clean of dead space junk since their new launch approach depends on clear space.

  3. Avatar photo Hubert says:

    It’s not 7000 still up. It’s around 6400. Folks at NasaSpaceflight track this stuff meticulously and update the number on each new launch. Or you can watch the weekly updates on their youtube channel

  4. Avatar photo Ad47uk says:

    What a waste, and yet we are told to recycle and not to waste resources. it is the U.S, so i expect it, certainly now with Trump in charge

    1. Avatar photo Andrew says:

      Each starlink satellite weighs 260 kg – so say they’re deorbiting 4 a day, and do this 365 days a year. that’s just over 365 tons of material hitting the atmosphere a year, whereas the earths atmosphere is hit with over 100 tons of dust / sand every single DAY – this is excluding meteors/meterorites.

      So in essence Starlink adds ~1% to the materials hitting the atmosphere before we consider larger meteors/meteorites.

  5. Avatar photo tonyp says:

    Many decades ago there were nuclear tests above earth that has radiation consequences (https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2024/11/05/nuclear-detonations-in-space-reducing-risks-to-low-earth-orbit-satellites/) and I cannot think that increased (and increasing) release of atomised particles, especially rare metals, can exactly enhance our planet as a whole. There is no such thing as harmless in my opinion. I suppose it is just ‘fake news’?

  6. Avatar photo Mr Maddox says:

    Rather lose access altogether to the internet than use Starlink, in fact I’d rather use a Chinese company than use Starlink

    1. Avatar photo Tanon says:

      Why? Musk Derangement Syndrome?

      We just got it installed last week and we’re now getting peaks of 450Mbps down and around 30-40Mbps up. Latency at around 25-30ms.

      That’s up from the 24Mbps down, 5Mbps up and 25-30ms latency we got on our FTTC connection (Openreach aren’t even planning to upgrade our area to FTTH).

  7. Avatar photo Buzz says:

    Talk to Mr. Musk. He will fix that.

  8. Avatar photo Nick says:

    All good stuff, as long as the “De-orbit” (For shag sake, just call it silicon rain) doesn’t single out another of those gold-top helos in DC. . . . . .or any other airbourne objects:-

    https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/649920-light-show-between-40-30-west.html

  9. Avatar photo SicOf says:

    Why no environmental impact, publication of pollution produced by the launches and ‘safe burning’ up on ‘deorbiting’ crahsing back to earth, basic physics dicatates the the component ‘burnt’ on re-entry will obvious produces at least oxides of what ?
    Of is this invisible / denied pollution, with delinquent measurement / authority control (of has musk bought his way out of such openness / honestey etc..)?
    Environmental delinquency / arraogance.

  10. Avatar photo Buggerlugz says:

    maybe de-orbiting them counts as a carbon-credit/tax rebate??

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

NOTE: Your comment may not appear instantly (it may take several hours) due to static caching and moderation checks by the anti-spam system. Please be patient. We will reject comments that spam, troll, post via known fake IP/proxy servers or fall foul of our Online Safety and Content Policy.
Javascript must be enabled to post (most browsers do this automatically)

Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message. By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.

Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
100Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £23.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £25.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £25.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £19.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
100Mbps
Gift: None
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £19.00
300Mbps
Gift: None
toob UK ISP Logo
toob £22.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £23.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6162)
  2. BT (3694)
  3. Politics (2780)
  4. Business (2488)
  5. Openreach (2447)
  6. Building Digital UK (2365)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2205)
  8. FTTC (2094)
  9. Statistics (1953)
  10. 4G (1859)
  11. Virgin Media (1814)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1619)
  13. Fibre Optic (1492)
  14. Wireless Internet (1478)
  15. 5G (1456)
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon