Prof. Sam Lawler@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
A single Falcon 9 rideshare launch had 115 satellites in it, several of which were tugs that will deploy additional satellites. So, 126 sats deployed from that one launch. On the one hand, great, because rocket launches pollute a lot. On the other hand, holy crap that's a lot of satellites at once.
42 rocket bodies in orbit from all these launches (rocket bodies are often bus-sized or larger, so this is scary). 23 were promptly deorbited, 19 left for uncontrolled reentry later.
Prof. Sam Lawler@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
131 catalogued objects reentered, 41 were Starlinks. (Still a bit more than 1 Starlink per day reentering on average). Not many reentries were observed, no new debris reported on the ground. We had a bit of discussion about whether or not this is observation bias (northern hemisphere winter so it's cloudier, and people aren't outside as much, maybe?)
With more than 600 new objects in orbit in just over a month, the CRASH Clock is not going to go down anytime soon. https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/