A simulation of the full network of Starlink satellites when their first 12,000 satellites are up – an additional 30,000 have been requested. While delivering high-speed internet globally is a noble goal, destroying ground-based astronomy, astrophotography, and even stargazing as a hobby should be reckoned with as extraordinary collateral damage. (Credit: SpaceX/Starlink)

By Kelly Kizer Whitt,
Posted on Earth Sky, 22 March 20026

SpaceX launched its first Starlink satellite into low Earth orbit in 2019. And the pace has been steady ever since. On March 17, 2026, a SpaceX launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carried 25 more Starlink satellites into space. With the addition of those 25 satellites, there are now more than 10,000 Starlinks orbiting Earth.

Unsurprisingly, the number continues to rise nearly daily. Also on March 17, 2026, SpaceX launched 29 Starlink satellites from Florida. And two days later, on March 19, another launch of 29 Starlink satellites blasted off from Florida. It can be hard to keep up with the total number of Starlinks in orbit!

Retired astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell – formerly of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics – updates the totals fairly regularly on his acclaimed website Jonathan’s Space Report. As the numbers climb, you can follow them here.

So there are 10,000-plus Starlinks currently in Earth orbit. But the total number of Starlinks launched since 2019 is 11,558. What happened to those 1,500 other satellites? They might have reached the end of their natural lives and deorbited. Or they might have come down early due to some incident, for example, the effects of geomagnetic storming. In fact, Jonathan McDowell told EarthSky in October – back when there were “only” 8,000 Starlinks in orbit – that one to two Starlink satellites fall back to Earth every day.

What are Starlink satellites?

Starlink satellites are part of SpaceX’s vision for a global internet communication satellite constellation. They deliver high-speed internet service worldwide, mainly to locations where ground-based internet is unreliable, unavailable or expensive. The private company plans to build up to perhaps as many as 30,000 eventually.

But astronomers are worried about the impact all these satellites will have on the night sky. The problem impacts both visual and radio astronomy.

And then there’s the issue of satellites deorbiting. The satellites are designed to break apart and burn up in the atmosphere on reentry. So your odds of being struck by one are incredibly low. But the metals they inject into the atmosphere during reentry are a problem.

Watch this video, which shows 3 different angles on a Starlink satellite disintegration in 2023, as captured near Puerto Rico. Video via Sociedad de Astronomía del Caribe (SAC).

What danger do they pose?

Ian Williams, a professor of applied environmental science at the University of Southampton, described the atmospheric dangers in The Conversation:

The problem is that most satellites are de-orbited when they reach the end of their lives. Essentially, they self-destruct in the Earth’s atmosphere, disintegrating as they are heated to thousands of degrees Celsius.

Researchers estimate that by the 2030s, reentering satellites could inject thousands to tens of thousands of tons of alumina (aluminium oxide) and other metals into the middle atmosphere each year.

Why does that matter? Alumina can catalyze the chemistry that destroys the ozone layer, which protects the Earth’s surface from harmful solar radiation. Meanwhile, rocket exhaust – especially black carbon (soot) from rocket engines powered by hydrocarbon propellants – warms the stratosphere (the layer of the atmosphere immediately above the one where we live) and alters winds.

What is the Kessler syndrome?

And then there’s the problem of the Kessler syndrome. The Kessler syndrome is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit is high enough that collisions between objects cause a cascade. And each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions. Read more about the Kessler syndrome here.

Identifying launches … and reentries

With the breakneck pace of Starlink launches, many more people are seeing the launches and not knowing what they are. So social media is flooded with images of jellyfish plumes or trains of light as the observers ask what they’re seeing.

Plus, SpaceX is not the only group upping its number of launches. Private companies and countries continue to increase their launches. The strange spirals that sometimes appear in the sky are actually rocket fuel dumps. In the case here, it was an Ariane 6 rocket launched from French Guiana in South America. Plumes, spirals and trains of lights are generally all from space launches.

And how can you tell if you’re seeing a meteor or the reentry of space junk? As McDowell told us:

The easy ‘meteor vs. space junk’ discriminator is speed. A meteor from solar orbit, even a big fireball, lasts only a few seconds and is gone, whizzz. Space junk goes more like airplane angular speed (really faster than a plane, but higher so it cancels out) and may be overhead for a couple of minutes.

Bottom line: There are now more than 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit around Earth. Plus, 1 to 2 Starlinks are falling back to Earth a day. Do they pose a danger? Find out here.

See: Original Article

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