Starlink satellite fails, polluting orbit with debris and falling toward Earth

Spacecraft set to burn up in a few weeks, but it could have been worse

As if to underscore the need to avoid the Kessler Syndrome, a scenario in which cascading debris can make some orbits difficult to use, a Starlink satellite vented propellant and released debris following an onboard "anomaly" late last week.

The incident, described by observers as "likely caused by an internal energetic source" rather than a collision, resulted in a loss of communication. According to Starlink, the result was a venting of the propellant tank and "the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects."

The satellite, Starlink 35956, was launched on November 23, 2025, as part of the Starlink Group 11-30-13 mission, according to Jonathan McDowell's satellite list. Its altitude was 418 km when communication was lost and is now tumbling, although still intact. In a post on X, Starlink stated that the satellite "will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise within weeks."

"The satellite's current trajectory will place it below the @Space_Station, posing no risk to the orbiting lab or its crew."

It is not clear what caused the "energetic" event. Starlink wrote that "our engineers are rapidly working to root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event."

Former Space Shuttle astronaut and International Space Station (ISS) crew member Ed Lu noted that "hundreds" of debris objects associated with the incident were being tracked, and had already spread out to 6,000 km over the orbital track within a few days. Lu is co-founder and CTO of LeoLabs, a business specializing in tracking objects in orbit.

The incident came days after a SpaceX executive claimed that a Chinese satellite launch came within 200 meters of colliding with a Starlink vehicle. It is therefore reassuring to know that SpaceX does not require the assistance of another space-faring power when it comes to unplanned debris-generating incidents in orbit.

Joking aside, the loss of communication, venting of propellant, and creation of an unknown amount of debris are a concern as low Earth orbit becomes more crowded.

Researchers recently proposed a "CRASH Clock" to indicate how long it could take before something catastrophic happens if all collision-avoidance maneuvers cease. While Starlink 35956 should burn up in Earth's atmosphere within a few weeks, the incident highlights the danger posed by debris and how easily and quickly the debris load in Low Earth Orbit can grow. ®