SpaceX will move more than 4,400 satellites to a lower orbit after China cited safety risk

SpaceX has announced it will reconfigure its Starlink internet satellite constellation by lowering the orbit of more than 4,400 satellites throughout 2026, shortly after Beijing said the project posed “safety and security challenges”.\nThe move aims to relocate the satellites to orbital regions less crowded by space debris and other planned satellite constellations, reducing the risk of collisions and allowing satellites to deorbit faster.\nIt comes after an unnamed representative from Beijing criticised the satellite constellation developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX during an informal meeting of the UN Security Council, stating that the network crowded shared satellite orbital resources and increased the risk of crashes in space.\n\n\n“Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety,” Michael Nicolls, vice-president of engineering at Starlink, said in a social media post on Friday, China time.\nNicolls said the altitude of its satellites orbiting at around 550km (342 miles) would be lowered to around 480km over the course of 2026, a feat that would involve shifting more than 4,400 satellites.\n“Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways,” he said, adding that “the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision”.\nInternet satellites in low Earth orbit are often launched to altitudes of around 500km to 1,200km. The International Space Station orbits at an altitude of 400km, while China’s Tiangong space station orbits between 340km and 450km.\nNicolls said the benefits would include more than 80 per cent reduction in ballistic decay time – the time it takes for an object in orbit to fall back to Earth – during the incoming solar minimum, which is expected around 2030.\nThe sun operates in a cycle of around 11 years, with the intensity of activity affecting the density of Earth’s upper atmosphere. Atmospheric density decreases during the solar minimum, lengthening the orbital decay time of satellites.\n“Starlink satellites have extremely high reliability, with only two dead satellites in its fleet of over 9,000 operational satellites. Nevertheless, if a satellite does fail on orbit, we want it to deorbit as quickly as possible,” Nicolls said.\nIn the post he stated that the lowering of the Starlink satellites would be “tightly coordinated” with regulators and other operators, as well as the US Space Command, the unified combatant command of the Department of Defence responsible for military operations in outer space.\n“These actions will further improve the safety of the constellation, particularly with difficult to control risks such as uncoordinated manoeuvres and launches by other satellite operators,” he said.\nDuring the informal meeting initiated by Russia last month, a Beijing representative said the rapid expansion of “certain” internet satellite constellations posed “major risks” and warned of the use of satellites by terrorist and separatist groups, as well as in military reconnaissance.\nThe representative pointed to Starlink, stating that “such constellations crowd frequency-orbit resources [which are shared by all satellites in orbit for communication and operation] and significantly increase the risk of collisions”.\nThe representative cited an incident in December when a Starlink satellite disintegrated in orbit in a freak incident, as well as two separate incidents in 2021 when Starlink satellites conducted “dangerous close approaches” to the Tiangong space station, forcing the spacecraft to take evasive action.\nSpaceX did not respond to the South China Morning Post’s request for comment on the Chinese representative’s remarks.\n\n\nThe Starlink internet satellite network aims to have more than 42,000 satellites in orbit when complete. Each is designed to have a five-year lifespan before it is deliberately burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.\nStarlink satellites, which are designed to avoid potential collisions autonomously, performed 145,000 collision avoidance manoeuvres in the first half of 2025, according to online publication Space.com.\nChina is building its own internet satellite constellations, including the Guowang network and the Shanghai-government-backed Qianfan broadband network – both of which aim to deploy more than 10,000 internet satellites.\n