[reactordev]

Indeed, working as intended. SpaceX said at the beginning that this was how they would “clean up” older gen sats.

[gitaarik]

Is this a common approach? Seems strange this happens on such a scale now without much scrutiny.

[reactordev]

As common as Starlink is… no one has sent that many satellites into space and before they even got approval, this was discussed at length. They would fire retrograde and deorbit, burning them up in the atmospheric re-entry.

https://www.starlink.com/public-files/Starlink_Approach_to_S...