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Russia warns United States: use of SpaceX for spying makes its satellites a target
(www.reuters.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Starlink birds fly too low for that, they will deorbit in 4-8 years if they go dead.
I'd be worried about debris flung into steeply elliptical orbits, though. It wouldn't take much to do some real damage to sats in higher orbits and once the cascade starts there's not much we can do but wait decades for the worst of it to fall into the atmosphere.
Those steeply elliptical orbits would probably deorbit even quicker since a random impulse that boosts the apogee is likely to lower the perigee even more.