"It might not be long before you look up and see a fiery, slow-moving object streaking across your night sky and, clearly, breaking into pieces. That’s if you haven’t seen such a thing already. There are currently one to two Starlink satellites falling back to Earth every day, according to retired Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. His acclaimed website Jonathan’s Space Report is widely regarded as the definitive source on spacecraft that go up … and come down. When we asked him about the deluge of Starlink satellite breakups that have recently been flooding social media, he pointed us to his graph showing Starlink reentries over time.
There are more than 8,000 Starlink satellites overhead at this moment. They’re a product of the space transportation company SpaceX. And that number is growing. Plus there are other companies and countries also deploying more and more satellites, adding to the number of satellites in Earth orbit. Many of these are in low-Earth orbits, which extend up to an altitude of 1,200 miles (2,000 km) above our planet. And the lifespan of low-Earth orbit satellites, such as Starlink, is only about 5 to 7 years. Soon, McDowell told us, there will be up to 5 satellite reentries per day."
