PARIS — SpaceX removed 42 of its Starlink satellites from orbit in the six months ending May 31, all of them before they had reached five years of operations. Five of them had lost their collision-avoidance capability, SpaceX said.
These figures do not include the 38 satellites SpaceX launched on Feb. 3 that fell victim to a geomagnetic storm, which caused a 50% increase in atmospheric drag at the 210-kilometer-altitude perigee at which they were dropped off by the Falcon 9 rocket.
SpaceX was able . . .
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