Starlink has fallen on our heads: how a Musk satellite ended up disintegrating in Spain

At 11 pm Paula thought she saw a meteor crossing our skies. He captured a video with his mobile and shared it minutes later on his Twitter account. Many other users responded confirming the phenomenon, which was not really a meteorite as such.

It was actually a satellite Starlink disintegrated upon re-entry into the atmosphere. This caused it to become a striking ball of fire that crossed all of Spain and apparently ended up falling into the Cantabrian Sea. Even falling on the ground, the possibility that it ends up falling on someone is minimal.

It is a bird? It is a plane? No, it’s a Starlink satellite.

This is how José María Madiedo (@jmmadiedo), doctor in astrophysics and chemistry and who works at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC). The sensors of the SWEMN Network (Southwestern Europe Meteor Network, Red de Bolidos y Meteoros del Suroeste de Europa) allowed him to capture how SpaceX’s Starlink satellite entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

It did so effectively at 11 p.m., Spanish peninsular time: the 260-kg satellite re-entered unos 27.000 km/h. It became a ball of fire that was created about 100 km high off the north of Morocco and continued its journey northwest across the Iberian Peninsula to end up apparently falling into the Cantabrian Sea.

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Madiedo explained how the satellite was fragmenting, which caused those who were able to observe the phenomenon to see how several fireballs appeared moving in parallel as these fragments became incandescent.

The satellite had been launched in January 2021 on the Transporter-1 mission, and it was not the only one that re-entered the atmosphere yesterday: three other satellites from that mission fell in different parts of the planet. In Aerospace they maintain a data base with the re-entries of all kinds of satellites, and that list shows how probably the satellite that was seen in the skies of Spain is the Starlink-2202 (ID 47416).

Why these satellites fall and why the danger of them falling on us is minimal

It is somewhat surprising that a satellite launched only a year ago ends up re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere so quickly, but in the case of the satellites of the Starlink network, the frequency of these re-entries seems to some extent reasonable.

That’s because according to a study by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the failure rate during its life cycle is 2.5%. This expert indicated that it is not an exceptional rate, but given the number of satellites in the Starlink network —there is already more than 2,000 in orbit—that makes the frequency of failures increase.

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As Madiedo explained, satellites that end their useful life end up losing altitude very slowly and falling into the atmosphere. In doing so, these satellites disintegrate for the most part: “the friction with the atmosphere becomes so abrupt that the material becomes incandescent and begins to vaporize, fragment and decompose.”

One would think that a 260kg satellite would pose a danger when falling to Earth, but as Madiedo points out, “the danger is minimal”. Much of it is destroyed in the atmosphere, he commented, “and the rest usually reaches the ground in the form of small fragments.”

In fact, he stressed, “since the space race began, there is only one verified case of a person who was hit by a satellite fragment”. This is Lottie Williams, who in 1997 was walking through a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and She was kicked on his shoulder by an object that fell from the sky and turned out to be a fragment of a Delta II rocket that was used to launch a United States Air Force satellite into orbit in 1996.

What is likely is, as we mentioned, that this type of reentry will become “something common”. The sheer number of Starlink satellites will likely increase the frequency of these events. With that failure you can also activate reentries that could be considered as forced. As Madiedo explained, “if necessary, the satellite can be ordered to modify its orbit so that reentry can take place.

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In fact, it is desirable to prevent more space debris from accumulating“. This is what happens, for example, with rockets to launch satellites: they are programmed to re-enter the atmosphere in a controlled manner.



Reference-www.xataka.com