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A comment on SpaceX Starlink is now its own ASN and present at the Seattle Internet Exchange. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX Starlink is now its own ASN and present at the Sea... by Rebelgecko on Thursday June 04, 2020 @04:22AM (#23414063)
No way. Orbital decay times increase more or less exponentially, and once you get above the thermopause (which moves around from 500-1000km based upon terrestrial and space weather conditions), atmospheric drag becomes practically 0.

SpaceX is upfront about this in their FCC filings:

"The natural orbital decay of a satellite at 1,150 km requires hundreds of years to enter the Earth’s atmosphere"

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Re:SpaceX Starlink is now its own ASN and present at the Sea... by kanox on Thursday June 04, 2020 @06:01AM (#23414653)
All current satellites are in 550 km orbits. They had plans to also launch in 1150 km orbits but they made some FCC filings requesting to reduce the altitude.
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Re:SpaceX Starlink is now its own ASN and present at the Sea... by Rebelgecko on Thursday June 04, 2020 @02:56PM (#23420373)
That's great news, I hadn't heard that they requested to lower everything to 550km (fcc filing here for the curious: https://fcc.report/IBFS/SAT-MOD-20200417-00037/2274315)
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Re:SpaceX Starlink is now its own ASN and present at the Sea... by reanimated on Thursday June 04, 2020 @02:45PM (#23420257)
On April SpaceX modified the architecture and submitted application to FCC proposing to operate more satellites in lower orbits. Previously they had approval to operate almost 3000 satellites in orbits between 1110-1300 km. Now the modified plan foresees 1500 satellites at altitudes between 540-570 km and another 7500 satellites in orbits around 345 km at later stages.
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