<story><title>Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm</title><url>https://www.spacex.com/updates/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oxplot</author><text>40 sats makes up about 2% of the current fleet - so a rounding error in cost and time.&lt;p&gt;The important part of this news is how those 40 sats deorbit and leave no junk either in orbit or on earth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>root_axis</author><text>I guess I&amp;#x27;m being pedantic, but as a percentage of a whole, isn&amp;#x27;t 2% &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; a rounding error by definition?</text></comment>
<story><title>Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm</title><url>https://www.spacex.com/updates/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>oxplot</author><text>40 sats makes up about 2% of the current fleet - so a rounding error in cost and time.&lt;p&gt;The important part of this news is how those 40 sats deorbit and leave no junk either in orbit or on earth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cshimmin</author><text>From the press release:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere. The deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The satellites are deliberately inserted into a low orbit so that any that fail to initialize properly will get pulled down by atmospheric drag. After successful initialization, they travel to a higher orbit (where presumably deorbiting under failure is more of an issue).</text></comment>