> autonomously perform maneuvers to avoid collisions with space debris and other spacecraft
Pretty cool.
Also, the north and south pole are conspicuously avoided by Starlink, confirming my suspicions about the locations of intergalactic space ports.
Are you saying that there will be intergalactic space ports at the poles in the future?
In the pre-flight press conference the topic of krypton thrusters came up, and at first he made a superman joke, but then said the real answer was the lower cost of krypton.
> Starlink is the first krypton propelled spacecraft ever flown.
So they're using non-flight-proven technology (Technology readiness level at most 6)... impressive!
They definitely de-orbit. Half of the reason their orbit is so low is to ensure that they de-orbit quickly once they are out of fuel (the other half is latency).
Deorbit is a fancy word for burn up in the atmosphere.
They are within earths gravitational pull, so if they have a hard failure or run out of fuel to the point they can't "push back" they get vaporized on reentry. It's a clever fail safe.
Every satellite going around earth is "within earth's gravitational pull". The starlink satellites are so low that they are inside the rarefied upper layers of the atmosphere, meaning they have low but constant drag pulling on them. When they stop thrusting, they will eventually fall out of the sky.