alt Hacker News> Hard to see how the repositioning appreciably alters this risk, since there are still thousands of satellites in the same plane to get hit by shrapnel from intentionally caused collisions, and the satellites in the lower orbit aren't invulnerable to it either
Yes, but the lower the orbit, the faster atmospheric drag (which isn't zero, just low) cleans up a cascade.
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childintime • today at 5:37 PM
Exactly. And this is likely to be the only valid reason for the orbit change.
Feel like I'm repeating myself here, but they're moving less than half of them, which is going to have a negligible impact on a state with sufficient ASAT weapons' ability to create a massive mess with the many thousands of Starlink satellites operating in their original plane. Not even like the satellites in the lowest orbit are insulated from the effects of debris cascades set off in higher reaches of LEO either
Plenty of operational reasons to want a large fraction of your constellation in a slightly lower orbit, none of them involve "terrorist states"