Over on Space.com, Mike Wall writes, “SpaceX lowering orbits of 4,400 Starlink satellites for safety’s sake”. The relevant snippet here is:
All Starlink broadband spacecraft currently orbiting 342 miles (550 kilometers) or so above Earth — about 4,400 satellites — will descend to an altitude of roughly 298 miles (480 km) over the course of 2026.
…where the reason for this appears to be to *reduce* the possibility of chance collisions and (apparently) to get Starlink into “less crowded space”. There’s a link to the X post over on Space.com that I won’t repost here, but there’s not too much more information in there.
As someone who works on an (un-maneuverable) satellite currently sitting between 550-km and 480-km this seems like 2026 is going to be a year of us making sure we know precisely where NuSTAR is so that one of these Starlinks doesn’t hit us…
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