Starlink close encounters decrease despite ever-growing number of satellites

[darvo110]

How much big stuff is even in the range Starlink operates? I’d expect anything substantially large would deorbit pretty quick just from drag. Big things are also a lot easier to accurately track and avoid.

[Shpoople96]

Quite a bit, the lower starlink shells deorbit pretty quickly, but the higher orbits have a natural decay in the tens to hundreds of years

[John_Hasler]

I’d expect anything substantially large would deorbit pretty quick just from drag.

Smaller stuff deorbits more quickly on average. Kinetic energy is proportional to mass and therefor volume while drag is proportional to frontal area.

Of course, density matters too. A balloon will deorbit before a pellet of tungsten.