Not at all for Starlink. The orbits are low enough to decay within 5-10 years if they are left without station keeping. Remember, "space" does not start at the

Not at all for Starlink. The orbits are low enough to decay within 5-10 years if they are left without station keeping. Remember, "space" does not start at the karman line, it is a continuous transition. Although, they have a license for satellites at ~1100 km altitude. Those would need active deorbiting. The Starlink satellites are also designed to completely burn up in the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why the first generation does not have laser-links, that was supposedly the hardest part to design fulfilling that criteria. That's actually one of the advantages of their proposed lowering of the orbits, they need to think even less about end of life questions and redundancy. Edit: See here for the continuous sweeping happening at lower orbits. https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ld4vlq/gabbard_diagram_animation_of_space_debris_since/ https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ld4vlq/gabbard_diagr...