Elon Musk’s SpaceX loses contact with Starlink satellite: What the space company said

Elon Musk’s space company, SpaceX, has said that an incident in low-Earth orbit (LEO) has affected one of its Starlink satellites after experiencing an anomaly, resulting in a loss of communication and the creation of orbital debris. According to the company, the incident occurred at an altitude of approximately 418 kilometres, and the spacecraft suffered a malfunction that severed all contact with ground control.

Starlink blames anomaly for loss of communications

In an official statement posted to X (formerly Twitter), Starlink clarified that the satellite suffered an “anomaly,” and it is largely intact..


“On December 17, Starlink experienced an anomaly on satellite 35956, resulting in loss of communications with the vehicle at 418 km. The anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects. SpaceX is coordinating with the @USSpaceForce and @NASA to monitor the objects,” Starlink said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

“The satellite is largely intact, tumbling, and will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and fully demise within weeks. The satellite's current trajectory will place it below the @Space_Station, posing no risk to the orbiting lab or its crew,” the company added.

“As the world’s largest satellite constellation operator, we are deeply committed to space safety. We take these events seriously. Our engineers are rapidly working to root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event,” it noted.

According to a report by news agency Reuters, this is a ‘smaller incident’ as compared to Intelsat Breakup in 2024 that created over 700 pieces of trackable debris. In 2023, Chinese rocket body’s mid-orbit explosion resulted in a massive cloud of high-velocity fragments.