While SpaceX has had plenty of successful launches, things don’t go to plan every time. The de-orbiting will push the total number of satellites SpaceX has brought back to Earth over the 500 mark — 406 have been removed from orbit so far. Elon Musk’s spacefaring company claims to have over 6,000 satellites in orbit at the time of writing, which means around 8% of the company’s satellites have been brought back down for some reason or other.
Then there are the ones that don’t even make it up there. SpaceX has had its share of failures, explosions, and “rapid unscheduled disassemblies” over the years. Not all of them involved Starlink satellites; the company has other interests in space including testing its Starship spacecraft and delivering both people and objects to the ISS. Musk himself has acknowledged the times things haven’t gone as planned and even once cobbled together a “SpaceX Fail Compilation” packed with botched launches.
While you may be worried about a satellite or rocket falling from space and landing on you, it really isn’t that much of a danger. While the risk is obviously never zero, there are an awful lot of things flying around many miles above our heads, but the chances of something positive like a Powerball win are far greater than death by satellite.
