ORLANDO, Fla. – The Federal Aviation Administration recently issued an ominous warning: by 2035, falling SpaceX Starlink satellites will have a greater than 60% chance of striking and killing someone on Earth.
In a report to Congress made public this month, the FAA claims that 28,000 fragments from Starlink satellites falling back to Earth could survive re-entry each year.
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“By 2035, if the expected large constellation growth is realized and debris from Starlink satellites survive reentry, the total number of hazardous fragments surviving reentries each year is expected to reach 28,000, and the casualty expectation, the number of individuals on the ground predicted to be injured or killed by debris surviving the reentries of satellites being disposed from these constellations, would be 0.6 per year, which means that one person on the planet would be expected to be injured or killed every two years,” the report states.
According to Futurism, SpaceX’s low-Earth orbit satellites are intended to last five years before de-orbiting.
SpaceX says the Starlink satellites are designed to burn up completely during re-entry, virtually posing no risk. But the FAA says the chance of a stray satellite fragment hitting and killing someone on the ground will rise to 61% each year.
SpaceX, which has launched about 5,000 satellites and plans to launch thousands more, said the FAA report is “nothing more than the culmination of several egregious errors, omissions, and incorrect assumptions,” as quoted by Ars Technica.
The space company said the FAA report, commissioned from the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation, was based on a 23-year-old study conducted by NASA and focused on satellites that were not designed to be “demisable.”
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In addition, SpaceX claims it has deorbited 325 of its satellites since 2020 with no debris being found.