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\t\t\tIllustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins \/ Futurism. Source: Chip Somodevilla \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Elon Musk\u2019s race to dominate our planet\u2019s orbit with his satellite constellations is creating tons of space junk<\/a> \u2014 enough of it, in fact, that we might want to start looking up.<\/p>\n According to storied Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell<\/a>, there are now one or two of these Starlink satellites falling back to Earth every single day, he recently told EarthSky<\/a>. And that figure, McDowell warned, is only going to keep climbing.<\/p>\n The alarming statistic underscores the concerns around rapidly populating the planet\u2019s Low Earth Orbit with expendable satellites. Musk\u2019s SpaceX has been launching thousands of them up there using his reusable rockets since 2019, with more than 8,000 currently in operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n With those efforts accelerating in recent years, SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 satellites in 2025 alone<\/a>. Meanwhile, its competitors are rushing to catch up with their own satellite-based internet service, with Amazon kickstarting its plan to deploy more than 3,200 with its first batch launched earlier this year<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWith all constellations deployed, we expect about 30,000 low-Earth orbit satellites (Starlink, Amazon Kuiper, others) and perhaps another 20,000 satellites at 1,000 km [620 miles] from the Chinese systems,\u201d McDowell told EarthSky.<\/p>\n Low Earth Orbit\u2019s rapidly getting more crowded, in other words, and that means a lot of satellite casualties. One of the reasons they\u2019re occurring so frequently is that Starlink\u2019s satellites have a short lifespan of around five years. After this, they\u2019re guided towards the Earth, where they\u2019re supposed to burn up upon re-entering the atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n All those cremated satellites have scientists concerned about the pollution they\u2019re causing by releasing metals into the stratosphere, with one study<\/a> speculating that it could kick off a chain reaction that devastates the ozone layer.<\/p>\n \u201cSo far answers have ranged from \u2018this is too small to be a problem\u2019 to \u2018we\u2019re already screwed,’\u201d McDowell told The Register<\/a>. \u201cBut the uncertainty is large enough that there\u2019s already a possibility we\u2019re damaging the upper atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n And atmospheric pollution may soon be the least of our worries. In a 2023 report<\/a>, the Federal Aviation Administration warned that by 2035, some 28,000 fragments from Starlink satellites could survive re-entry each year, skyrocketing the chance of someone on the ground getting struck and killed by space debris \u2014 once considered an astronomical improbability \u2014 to a staggering 61 percent each year.<\/p>\n As it stands, the Earth\u2019s on track to be bombarded by five satellite re-entries per day in the near future, McDowell warned. But that\u2019s not even the worst case scenario. McDowell fears that if satellite constellations become too crowded, it could host a disastrous chain reaction called Kessler syndrome, in which a few collisions between satellites cascade out of control and create even more space debris, potentially trapping humankind below a whirling vortex of orbital shrapnel. SpaceX\u2019s satellites are low enough that it\u2019s unlikely they\u2019d survive the amount of time needed for this cascade to happen, but its dominance there may force competitors to higher orbits where their craft could take decades, if not centuries, to de-orbit.<\/p>\n And what if a whole swathe of satellites get wiped out by a solar storm all at once? It\u2019s not an impossibility, as research has shown that the satellites were falling out of the sky more frequently<\/a> during a period of volatile solar activity called the solar maximum. All told, we\u2019ve reached a point where we can no longer brush the space junk problem under the rug.<\/p>\n