While neither the regime nor SpaceX likes to reveal their cards, hackers and journalists are not deterred by this, and the laws of physics apply to everyone.
While neither the regime nor SpaceX likes to reveal their cards, hackers and journalists are not deterred by this, and the laws of physics apply to everyone.
What is going to happen when countries decide that they don’t want starlink satellites over thei air space and start to blow them up?
It would be hard to do? How much would that affect the general use of starlink for users on other parts of the world?
Given that space isn’t owned by any one country, and Starlink is a US company, whose services are used by the US government, there’s a very good chance there would be military retaliation.
Only two countries have demonstrated air launched rockets that can destroy satellites on orbit, the USA and Russia. There is good speculation that China has built anti-satellites satellites, but no one is aware of any actual proven test.
Here’s the USA’s anti-satellite rocket being launched on its one and only test:
Now, lets assume that all 3 countries decide they want to attack Starlink satellites at once with all their weapons. Perhaps they destroy 30 satellites in total. As of November 2025 the Starlink network surpassed 10,000 satellites in orbit. As for replacing the lost satellites, a single launch places 25 to 28 satellites in orbit at a time. Within the next 24 hours 25 more Starlink satellites will be launched:
In 4 days, another launch is occurring that will place 24 more Starlink satellites in orbit.
source
So destroying a few dozen Starlink satellites might cause a slight blip in coverage for maybe a few minutes tops in specific narrow geographic locations, but only for a little while until replacements move to positions.
Destroying a few dozen satellites would probably kickstart a Kessler síndrome.
Maybe, but not guaranteed. Starlink satellites aren’t very big (meaning not very large pieces if they blow up). Additionally, Starlink satellites have active avoidance systems that can “dodge” debris to a degree (its slow, but space is big). Lastly, because the pieces would be small, they’d experience more atmospheric drag and fall back to Earth faster. Whether that means weeks instead of years, I don’t know.
It’s hard to predict the outcome in such a chaotic event but starlink alone already does 100k+ collision avoidance maneuvers each year (can’t remember the exact number but is more than one every 2 minutes). It’s highly unlikely that we would be able to accurately track the newly formed debris of dozens of satellites blowing up and adjust the orbit of (potentially) hundreds of satellites in a few minutes.
Didn’t starlink satellites in really low orbit? Maybe you don’t need as sofisticate technology as with other satellites.
That picture of the F-15 jet firing the missile was at a satellite 300 miles up. Starlink satellites are about 350 miles up.
Look up Kessler syndrome for an answer as to what may happen if starlink satellites were attacked, although I think I recall people more knowledgeable than me stating this orbit is low enough where it may not be a permanent issue. Nations only control their airspace up to the Karman line which is 100km up. Starlink satellites are well beyond that.
Very hard to do. You need to be able to launch to the same orbits as the satellites and Starlink uses thousands of satellites, almost all of which will at some point fly over those countries. So they’d need to shoot them all down.
What about lasers?
I think ESA had an idea about deorbiting space debris using lasers.
Are these lasers attached to sharks?