SpaceX's planned communication satellite constellation, known as Starlink, will now be targeting a much lower orbit than originally planned, at least for over a thousand of the satellites, the company revealed in an FCC filing. The move should help mitigate orbital debris and provide better signal for the company's terrestrial users as well.
Starlink plans to put 1,584 satellites - about a third of the 4,409 the company aims to launch - in an orbit just 550 kilometers about the surface of the Earth. For comparison, many communications satellites are in orbits over twice as high, and geosynchronous orbits are more than 20 times further out .