SpaceX's Move to Lower Altitude Seen as Signal to Regulators and Insurers
SpaceX's plan to lower roughly 4,800 satellites orbiting at about 550 kilometers to about 480 kilometers (see 2601020014) shows that the need for large-scale avoidance of near-misses is shaping constellation design choices, Satmarin Exoflux's Michael De Coninck wrote Monday. The choice of 480 km isn't random, because below 500 km the long-term debris persistence problem "is materially different," he said. "If you’re the world’s largest constellation operator, the best sustainability policy is the one you can execute with your own propulsion and timeline, rather than waiting for a global consensus meeting that ends with 'we will establish a working group.'"
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De Coninck said a major implication is that low earth orbit satellite competition "is shifting from pure deployment velocity to operational governance as a differentiator." An operator showing that it can move thousands of spacecraft as a fleet demonstrates that its "network is a controllable organism rather than a swarm of independent objects," he added. "That matters to regulators, insurers, defense customers, and everyone else sharing orbital highways."