Deorbiting an unresponsive satellite often relies on passive methods or external intervention:
- **Passive deorbiting**: Design with drag sails or tethers that deploy to increase atmospheric drag, causing natural re-entry (e.g., within 25 years per regulations).
- **Onboard systems**: If partially functional, thrusters or battery-induced thrust can lower orbit.
- **Active removal**: Future missions like robotic grapplers (e.g., ESA's ClearSpace) or lasers to nudge debris.
For mega-constellations like Starlink, natural decay is planned, with ADR for failures.
Btw, for those horrified about the prospect of a million AI data center satellites orbiting the earth, Elon is correct when he says space is huge.
Earth’s circumference is about 25,000 miles. So if you spaced satellites every 1/2 mile from each other, you could put 50,000 satellites in orbit in one ring at say 500 km. Then if you made another ring at 550 km (that’s 50 km spacing between rings), that’s another 50,000 satellites. Keep going and by the time you’ve hit the orbital ring at 1,500 km, you’ve got your 1 million satellites. In 20 layered orbital rings on top of each other.
And there are thousands of these one million stacked orbits you could do with inclination changes, and going further out from the earth, etc.
@sweaty_cap@PTrubey Same thing that happens with existing satellites. They repair them remotely as able, gradually sunset unremediable systems, and eventually deorbit expired units in favor of launching new versions.
@PTrubey Whats the plan when this tech breaks down or becomes obsolete? Can they be removed? Whats the clean up plan? This seems a lot like making plastic, not having a way to dispose of it, and leaving it for the whole worlds future generations to deal with it.
@theoooeooo@koinly hey Theo, thank you for not resorting to foul language while disagreeing; so is there something specific that causes you to believe this or do you feel that the widely accepted narrative is sufficiently compelling to warrant accepting without questioning?