An unprecedented number of Starlink satellites are crashing back to Earth, with an average of 2 satellites per day being launched by October 2025 orbit, and there have been cases with as many as 4. This raises new concerns about atmospheric pollution and the growing challenge of managing space debris, writes The American Bazaar.
This number is expected to increase to about five passengers per day as Sraseh continues to expand its network a constellation that currently includes about 8,500 operational passengers out of approximately 12,000 working passengers in orbit.
The accelerating rate of orbit attrition marks a dramatic change compared to pre-Starlink models. ΠAs of 2019, only 40 to 50 passengers worldwide re-enter the Earth's atmosphere each year.
The SRS now takes off from orbit with the equivalent of a decade of orbital activity for just a few months, contributing about 15,000 kilograms of aluminum oxide particles to the upper atmosphere over a period of half a year.
Each passenger launched from orbit, it produces approximately 30 kilograms of aluminum oxide, a compound that can deplete the ozone layer. ΠRecent studies suggest that levels of aluminum oxide in the atmosphere increased eightfold between 2016 and 2022, which is likely to make things worse.
"It is not yet clear, even in the era of mega-constellations, whether these effects will be large enough to be truly problematic, but it is not clear "and they won't be," Jonathan McDail, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told the space magazine Earth.
ΠParallel to this, there are all the more serious concerns about the management of cosmic traffic. According to the European Space Agency's 2025 Space Environment Report, unlaunched satellites or rocket components are currently entering the Earth's atmosphere more than three times a day on average.
As a whole, active objects in some orbital bands are comparable in density to cosmic rays.
McDail warns that while Starlink passengers are being evacuated from orbit according to a clear procedure with reduced risk, so in many other cases it may seem that we are playing a dangerous lottery.
"Every few months there is a report about a spacecraft that has entered the atmosphere and fallen to Earth as significant debris. "So we shoot at the Earth's surface a few times a year and fortunately we haven't hit them yet," the expert commented.