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Earth’s atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats
(go.theregister.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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Doesn't that just mean that lower orbits can be used? Less air resistance?
I imagine it'd make the business more expensive low orbit satelites slowly fall into the atmosphere and are supposed to burn up after a couple of years. I imagine with lower orbits that they'd fall sooner and you'd have to launch more to sustain your system which then produces more pollution and perpetuates the problem.
Edit article says more space junk and slower burning up in the atmosphere as an effect so that's interesting. If it becomes a space junk graveyard I imagine satellites will more frequently get damaged by them and become junk themselves?
Eventually, mining the LEO cloud for energy and materials will become lucrative.
Of course, there are other issues with our atmosphere going away….
Like that we are speedrunning to making Earth into Mars?
Given the speed of climate change, probably more like a speed run to our sister planet, Venus.