According to a filing with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, 472 Starlink satellites burned up in the atmosphere between December 2024 and May 2025, as SpaceX deorbited around 6% of its active fleet.
Starlink satellites are built to last around five years. After that, they're steered into the Earth's atmosphere to burn up. SpaceX, the rocket company owned by Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk, launched the first Starlink satellites in 2019, which means we're now seeing its first full-scale deorbiting. More than 1.4 million homes use Starlink's internet service in the US, and in many rural areas, the technology has been an absolute gamechanger.
But scientists have raised concerns about the unintended consequences that come with such an unprecedented rise in the number of satellites in the sky. Of the roughly 10,000 active objects in low-Earth orbit -- around 1,200 miles from the Earth's surface or closer -- more than 7,750 belong to Starlink, according to data collected by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who tracks satellite launches.
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SpaceX submits voluntary reports to the FCC twice a year on the state of its satellite constellation. At the December check-in, only 73 satellites had been deorbited in the previous six-month period. That massive increase could have serious impacts here on Earth.
Scientists have increasingly found metals from spacecraft in the stratosphere, and on rare occasions, space debris has even made it to the ground. SpaceX revealed last summer (PDF) that a 5.5-pound piece of aluminum from a Starlink satellite was found on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada.
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"As usual, humanity is doing a new experiment with our environment. We're doing something that nature hasn't done before," McDowell told CNET.
SpaceX insists the deorbiting process is safe, putting the risk of a human casualty (PDF) at "less than 1 in 100 million" for its current V2 satellites.
"SpaceX satellites exceed industry standards for demisability, with no calculable risk to life on the ground, coupled with targeted reentry of satellites over unpopulated regions of the globe," says SpaceX's filing.
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