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No. None are space junk and none were made nonfunctional by the storm. 1. The storm caused the atmosphere to expand 2. which increases drag on satellites. 3.
by Armisael16 5y ago
No. None are space junk and none were made nonfunctional by the storm.
1. The storm caused the atmosphere to expand
2. which increases drag on satellites.
3. The satellites were in safe mode because of the storm, so…
4. some satellites fell out of orbit because they couldn’t produce enough thrust to recover after the storm
No satellite was ever even at risk of becoming space junk. This is pretty read TFA stuff.
- leoh 5y agoIs there any way they are being held accountable/is there open data to support assertions of the article in question?
- Armisael16 5y agoThis is also fairly well-known physics. We know what the atmosphere is like at those altitudes and we know what a starlink satellite looks like. Anything that sits around there is going to fall out of orbit pretty fast unless it has active thrust. Several governments have space-object tracking systems that work on stuff far smaller than starlink satellites - the US, the EU, Russia, probably China. I doubt that’s open enough for you, though. Frankly it doesn’t seem to me like there much to hold spacex accountable for. They’re out ~$35mm, but it’s harmless to the rest of us.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- leoh 5y ago> This is pretty read TFA stuff. > Several governments have space-object tracking systems that work on stuff far smaller than starlink satellites - the US, the EU, Russia, probably China. I doubt that’s open enough for you, though. I think it’s entirely reasonable to ask for data to back up SpaceX’s assertions and to feel concerned about it not being furnished. This is how proper science and engineering works. We don’t merely take press releases at face value.
- rklaehn 5y agoThe orbital data of all satellites is publicly available. It is calculated by the US space force (formerly US air force) spacetrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillance_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan... . You can get the data via several public websites. Here for example are the current orbital elements of all starlink sats in JSON format: https://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/gp.php?GROUP=starlink&FORMAT=json https://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/gp.php?GROUP=starlink&F... This is raw data. If you want somebody that processes this data into easily digestable graphs, that also exists. Follow Jonathan McDowell ( @planet4589 ) on twitter, or read one of these Nasaspaceflight threads: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49936.200 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49936.200 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50307.0 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50307.0 It is not even that hard to display it yourself. Propagation libraries for most major language exist. Here is a display of all active sats, using wasm and rust that I did as a toy: https://rklaehn.ddns.net/allsats/ https://rklaehn.ddns.net/allsats/