The company de-orbited 218 Starlink satellites between June and November, down from the 472 that burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere in the previous six months.
The number of Starlink satellites falling back to Earth and burning up in the atmosphere has declined in recent months, down from around 500 to 200.
The decrease, mentioned in SpaceX’s latest semi-annual report to the FCC, suggests the company has successfully retired a large number of older Starlink satellites.
arlink satellite usually lasts for five years before it’s eventually de-orbited; during the atmosphere re-entry, the satellite is designed to completely burn up. Others can be retired early if they malfunction or a hardware flaw is found.
However, the Starlink constellation has become so large—spanning over 10,000 satellites—that the rate of satellite burn-ups faced a sharp increase a year ago. The company de-orbited as many as four to five Starlink satellites per day, according to astronomer and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
SpaceX later revealed it had de-orbited 472 satellites between December 2024 and May 2025. But it only de-orbited 218 from June to November, its report says.
Most of the de-orbited satellites, at 167, belonged to the first-generation Starlink constellation, which began serving the first US customers over five years ago.
