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.
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.