Solar Storms Threatened Starlink Satellites

There is a team of scientists that expressed concern has warned that the space congestion problem is in danger of spiralling out of control, describing our current situation as a "House of Cards".

Individual satellites within mega-constellations, such as SpaceX’s Starlink, must perform an increasing number of collision-avoidance maneuvers each year.

According to scientists, solar storms could trigger Kessler Syndrome — a scenario in which satellites collide, leading to a cascading, destructive event in Earth’s orbit.

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing in 2023 showed that SpaceX’s Starlink satellites had to make 50,000 collision avoidance maneuvers over the previous four years.

That same year, Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the University of Southampton in the UK, calculated that, if trends continued, Starlink satellites would have to perform roughly a million maneuvers every six months by 2028.

This leaves little margin for error. Ultimately, space is becoming increasingly congested, and we are edging closer to the cascading destructive scenario known as Kessler Syndrome. This could ultimately prevent spacecraft from reaching orbit, as there would be too great a risk of collision with small space debris.

Now, a team at Princeton University has warned that solar storms could be the tipping point that leads to a Kessler Syndrome scenario. In a pre-print, they explain that solar storms heat the atmosphere, increasing atmospheric drag. This means that more fuel is required to maintain orbits and perform evasive maneuvers.