Elon Musk\u2019s space Internet company said this satellite, which appears to have blown to pieces, did not appear to pose a risk to the ISS or the upcoming NASA moon mission<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
By Claire Cameron<\/a> edited by Lee Billings<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Elon Musk\u2019s Starlink Internet satellites suffered an \u201canomaly\u201d<\/a> on Sunday while in orbit around Earth, the company said in a social media post. The incident appears to have created some debris, with fragments likely to fall to Earth over the next few weeks, according to LeoLabs<\/a>, a company that monitors satellites in low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The satellite lost communication at about 560 kilometers above Earth, Starlink said. While the statement from Starlink, which is a subsidiary of Musk\u2019s rocket company SpaceX, merely noted that investigations are ongoing, LeoLabs said its radar observations of the event indicated an \u201cinternal energetic source\u201d as the likely cause rather than a collision. SpaceX and LeoLabs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The incident underscores the potential hazards of the increasingly large numbers of satellites<\/a> and other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit\u2014some 10,000 Starlinks are currently in orbit and counting<\/a>. Starlink\u2019s statement said that \u201cthe event poses no new risk\u201d to the International Space Station or to the upcoming launch of NASA\u2019s Artemis II<\/em> mission, targeted for April 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who closely tracks space activity, is more skeptical, however. \u201cI don\u2019t see how the risks can be nil,” he says. \u201cThey are low because all the debris is expected to reenter quickly. But I\u2019d like to hear more about why they assess the risk to be zero.\u201d And if the fragmentation event arose from a design flaw, McDowell adds, that could affect hundreds of Starlinks, \u201cand then the risks go up, a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe hope is that SpaceX will identify the root cause and proactively retire any particular subset of satellites that are found to be at risk,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Editor\u2019s Note (3\/31\/26): This is a developing story and may be updated.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even for such an expensive item to be placed in orbit where they’d really prioritize quality control, it would appear a battery failure due to manufacturing defect in the battery or the battery management circuitry. That is very interesting. https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/spacex-starlink–satellite-suffers-mysterious-anomaly-in-orbit\/ Elon Musk\u2019s space Internet company said this satellite, which appears to have blown to pieces, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16600,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16599\/revisions\/16600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Starlink](\"https:\/\/static.scientificamerican.com\/dam\/asset\/6993c7d4-c8d7-44ac-9d34-d97ad5d8cc00\/Starlink.jpg?m=1774967429.105&w=600\")