SpaceX Satellites Are Starting To Fall Out Of The Sky
One of SpaceX's mini-satellites has fallen out of orbit toward the Earth.
If a big hunk of metal just landed in your backyard, it could belong to Elon Musk. The billionaire’s tech company, SpaceX, has reported that its satellites are dropping out of the sky, according to Gizmodo. After launching 21 of its mini Starlink satellites, one of them has fallen out of orbit and reentered Earth’s atmosphere.
Luckily, no one is going to be hit in the head by this satellite, because it most likely disintegrated on its heated reentry back to Earth. Among the remaining 20 SpaceX satellites that are still out in orbit, there are a few that are having some technical issues. Some of these will need to be deorbited, and others may get to stay in space while SpaceX runs tests on them from afar.
It was reported that the SpaceX satellite that fell from orbit reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Monday, April 3, 2023 at around 4:50 am ET, just off the coast of California. The SpaceX satellite was spotted by a Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist who shared the information on the Elon Musk owned company, Twitter, of course.
The 21 SpaceX satellites, referred to as V2 Minis, were launched into orbit on February 27 by the Falcon 9 rocket. These satellites are mini versions of SpaceX’s original Starlink satellites that power Elon Musk’s relatively new internet company.
The purpose of the V2 Minis is to increase the number of satellites in the company’s megaconstellation. Currently, there are 3,660 SpaceX satellites in orbit, making up about half of the satellites that are out there. Elon Musk plans to boost these numbers to an astonishing 42,000 SpaceX satellites, as long as they don’t fall back to Earth.
Elon Musk started launching SpaceX satellites into orbit back in 2019 to start his Internet company, Starlink. The satellite internet constellation provides Internet access to homes, businesses, and RV’s all over the world, currently reaching over 50 countries. And the company doesn’t want to stop there; they’ve got plans to launch a global mobile phone service later this year, so big cellular names like T-Mobile and AT&T should watch out.
Starlink is just one of the many business ventures started by one of the richest men on Earth, Elon Musk. The 53-year-old South African businessman owns five businesses in total: Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, The Boring Company, and Neuralink. This puts his net worth at $192.8 Billion, just ahead of Jeff Bezos (at $127 Billion) and Bill Gates (at $109 Billion).
Elon Musk always seems to have a project up his sleeve, like working with Nokia to get Internet on the Moon and dabbling in space war combat. The latter is in relation to SpaceX’s partnership with True Anomaly, a company that works on commercial and military space combat assets. The two companies are using SpaceX satellites called Jackals which—when launched into space—will practice tagging each other with sensors during orbital pursuit.
So, next time you’re out stargazing, make sure to keep an eye out for falling SpaceX satellites and orbital battles between Jackals.
