Comment by benjiro
1 day ago
> It added 2,300+ satellites in the one year period ending Jun 2025.
Take in account, that a lot of those are replacement sats for the first generations that they are deorbiting already. Do not quote me on this, but its a insane amount (i though it was around 2k) of the first generation that they are deorbiting. If there is a issue, its not the amount of sats in space, but more the insane amount of deorbiting StarLink is doing.
Starlink wanted to put up insane numbers, but a lot of their fights contain a large percentage of replacement sats.
And they are getting bigger ... v1.5 is like 300kg, the v2.0 mini (ironic as its far from mini compared to its predecessors) are 800kg.
So before StarLink launched 60x v1.5's but now they are doing 21x v2.0 Mini's per launch.
The technology has been improving a lot, allowing for a lot more capacity per satellite. Not sure when they start launching v3's but those have like 3x the capacity for inner connects/ground stations and can go up to 1Gbit speeds (compared to the v2's who are again much more capable then multiple v1.5s).
So what we are seeing is less satellites per launch but more capacity per sat. This year is the last year that they are doing mass 1.5 launches, its all now going to the v2.0 "mini" (so 3x less sats).
I love checking out the Starlink launches wikipedia page every so often [1], which is regularly updated. Here's stats as of today:
"As of 31 July 2025:
Satellites launched: 9,314
Satellites failed or deorbited: 1,237
Satellites in orbit: 8,096
Satellites working: 8,077
Satellites operational: 7,040"
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshiel...
Satellite constellations in LEO tend to have short design lives of 5 years or so, but the net change in operating satellites since that 2021 graphic is huge: Starlink alone has over 8000 in orbit now (plus another 1200 deorbited). The later generations of Starlink are bigger, but the launch cadence increases...