“Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways,” says Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’ vp of Starlink engineering in a post on X, “the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision.”
“The lowering is being tightly coordinated with other 
operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM,” adds Nicolls, “lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways. As solar minimum approaches, atmospheric density decreases which means the ballistic decay time at any given altitude increases – lowering will mean a >80% reduction in ballistic decay time in solar minimum, or 4+ years reduced to a few months.”
“Correspondingly, the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision,” adds Nicools.
”Starlink satellites have extremely high reliability, with only 2 dead satellites in its fleet of over 9000 operational satellites,” concludes Nicolls, “nevertheless , if a satellite does fail on orbit, we want it to deorbit as quickly as possible. These actions will further improve the safety of the constellation, particularly with difficult to control risks such as uncoordinated maneuvers and launches by other satellite operators.”
This comes after Starlink said in December that one of its satellites, Satellite 35956, had a propulsion tank failure, causing it to tumble, lose communication, and release a small debris cloud at ~418 km altitude. The suggestion was that it was caused by a propellant tank rupture.
Starlink satellites are de-orbited as part of a regular end of life process the satellite uses its onboard ion thrusters to lower its altitude into a disposal orbit.
