Starlink satellite part hit a Canadian farm when it fell from orbit

  • That's not great, especially since SpaceX apparently expected the component to burn up in the atmosphere. Given there are thousands of them up there, and all must re-enter over the next decade or so, that's a lot of potential debris impacts on the ground.

  • https://archive.is/5ZljY

    Primary source linked therein,

    (.pdf) https://www.starlink.com/public-files/Starlink_Approach_to_S... ("Starlink Approach to Satellite Demisability")

    - "On August 20, 2024, a 2.5 kg piece of aluminum was found on the ground in a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada, and determined by SpaceX engineers to have come from a Starlink satellite that reentered following the erroneous Falcon G9-3 deploy. The debris was traced by SpaceX engineers to a specific satellite and part – a modem enclosure lid of the backhaul antenna on a Starlink direct-to-cell satellite. This part was predicted to fully demise by both the NASA and ESA tools and is the only known Starlink fragment to have not done so."

  • This is only one of many reported - there's Canadian news coverage from earlier last year that SpaceX conveniently left out of their own report

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/cp-space-junk-more-...

    Same story featured in Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacex-dropped-sp...

  • Am I the only one who think: "Canadian government officials joking about that 'Musk is throwing now satellites at them'".

  • They should get some sort of compensation, even if no one was injured.

  • Canadians catching all sorts of strays these days

  • Littering. That's a $250 fine