It looks like SpaceX is proactively deorbiting satellites that are aging and loosing maneuverability. They are also supporting industry wide standards on deorbit plans for satellites that reach end of life.
There’s clearly self interest here to protect their current and future assets, but it has the added benefit of helping avoid a build up of space debris in our planets orbit. It also puts pressure on other players in the industry to follow suit.
5 years doesn’t seem a long time
Imagine Musk effing up the deorbit on one of his toys and it causes a chain reaction of colliding satellites, otherwise known as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)
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>The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is numerous enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions. In 2009, Kessler wrote that modeling results had concluded that the debris environment was already unstable, “such that any attempt to achieve a growth-free small debris environment by eliminating sources of past debris will likely fail because fragments from future collisions will be generated faster than atmospheric drag will remove them”. One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.
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It looks like SpaceX is proactively deorbiting satellites that are aging and loosing maneuverability. They are also supporting industry wide standards on deorbit plans for satellites that reach end of life.
There’s clearly self interest here to protect their current and future assets, but it has the added benefit of helping avoid a build up of space debris in our planets orbit. It also puts pressure on other players in the industry to follow suit.
5 years doesn’t seem a long time
Imagine Musk effing up the deorbit on one of his toys and it causes a chain reaction of colliding satellites, otherwise known as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)
​
>The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is numerous enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions. In 2009, Kessler wrote that modeling results had concluded that the debris environment was already unstable, “such that any attempt to achieve a growth-free small debris environment by eliminating sources of past debris will likely fail because fragments from future collisions will be generated faster than atmospheric drag will remove them”. One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.