Re:Amazon's Kuiper responds to SpaceX on FCC request
by blisterpeanuts on Sunday February 07, 2021 @02:53PM
(#26057654)
The Starlink sats are also specifically designed to be forcibly de-orbited at end-of-life, rather than remain as space junk for however long.[1]
1. starlink.com
The Starlink satellites are also designed to completely burn up in the atmosphere. This is one of the reasons why the first generation does not have laser-links, that was supposedly the hardest part to design fulfilling that criteria.
That's actually one of the advantages of their proposed lowering of the orbits, they need to think even less about end of life questions and redundancy.
Edit: See here for the continuous sweeping happening at lower orbits.
https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ld4vlq/gabbard_diagr...