SpaceX Deorbited 260 Starlink Satellites in Six Months — and the Environmental Questions Are Piling Up

The numbers are hard to ignore. Between December 2025 and May 2026, SpaceX deliberately deorbited and destroyed 260 Starlink satellites — 176 from the first-generation constellation and the rest from the second generation — by steering them into Earth’s atmosphere to burn up on reentry. The company disclosed the figure in a semi-annual report filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission earlier this month.

Another 349 satellites have completed the decommissioning process and are scheduled for disposal in the coming months. The scale of the operation reflects a fundamental feature — and a growing concern — of the megaconstellation era.

Starlink now has more than 10,000 operational satellites in orbit. Each one is designed with a roughly five-year operational lifespan, a deliberate choice that lets SpaceX cycle through hardware generations without waiting for old satellites to drift down on their own. When a satellite runs low on fuel, its onboard systems execute a controlled deorbit burn, lowering its altitude until it hits the atmosphere and incinerates at temperatures high enough to leave no debris behind.

It happens almost daily. During the prior reporting period — December 2024 to May 2025 — SpaceX deorbited more than 472 satellites. Retrieving them isn’t practical: first-generation satellites weigh between 260 and 295 kilograms each, and the second-generation units tip the scales at 800 to 1,250 kilograms. Atmospheric disposal is effectively the only option the company considers economically and technically feasible.

But what goes up must burn up — and that’s where the controversy lies. While the controlled reentries ensure no satellite fragments reach the ground, researchers have been sounding alarms about what all that vaporized metal is doing to the atmosphere. The environmental impact of megaconstellations remains poorly studied, and regulatory oversight has been almost entirely absent.

The FCC has historically exempted satellite projects from environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Agency officials have worried that stricter rules could slow down the U.S. competitive edge in space. That approach is now being formalized: the FCC has proposed that “space operations are exempt from NEPA because they constitute extraterritorial activities whose impacts occur entirely outside U.S. jurisdiction.” The proposal has not yet been approved.

SpaceX’s long-term plans will only intensify the debate. The company has laid out a multi-phase roadmap that could eventually put as many as 42,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. In January, the FCC approved an additional 7,500 second-generation satellites. Beyond internet connectivity, SpaceX is developing an orbital data center concept — the A1 satellite, carrying 120 kilowatts of compute payload per unit. To manufacture all of this, the company is building a satellite production facility spanning 11 million square feet, roughly the size of 190 American football fields.

Satellite megaconstellations are here to stay. The open question is whether the environmental cost of routinely incinerating thousands of spacecraft in the upper atmosphere will get a proper accounting before that number hits 42,000.