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Old 03-02-20, 09:24 AM   #19
Onkel Neal
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Yep, they have small ion thrusters to move them around and keep them in place, and from what I have read, they are designed to be deorbited as newer tech is developed to replace them. As a property of their low Earth orbit by design, this will be routine:

Quote:
... there’s the matter of attrition, as satellites will begin to deorbit after a few years and SpaceX will need to replace them regularly in order to maintain its constellation. In fact, Hugh Lewis – the UK Space Agency’s representative on the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee – recently stated that in order to maintain a constellation of just 4425 satellites, SpaceX will have to launch that many every five years.

However, SpaceX intends to use this to their advantage by gradually replacing inactive satellites with ones that offer superior performance. In this way, the constellation will gradually be upgraded with the addition of heavier satellites that are capable of transmitting more information, and which are placed in longer-lasting, higher orbits."
https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/24/sp...60-satellites/

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