WASHINGTON, July 6, 2026, 04:21 (EDT)
- SpaceX NASDAQ:SPCX took down 260 Starlink satellites over the last six months, with another 349 satellites now out of service and set to be removed.
- The churn stack of 609 satellites is about 5.7% of the 10,743 Starlink satellites that Jonathan McDowell tracked as working as of July 5.
- Nasdaq pre-market was trading when the story was filed. SpaceX last showed $162 a little after 04:00 EDT.
SpaceX NASDAQ:SPCX now counts 260 Starlink satellites lost to atmospheric burnup between December and May and another 349 lined up for disposal. Altogether that’s 609 units, a count that adds up for a company trading on growth hopes in public markets.
The info was disclosed in a semiannual filing to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, signed by David Goldman, SpaceX’s VP of satellite policy. SpaceX said maintaining its conservative approach on satellite disposal requires “significant investment.” The company favors “de-orbiting and replacing satellites” instead of waiting for them to fail. Scribd
| Starlink disposal metric | Count | Investor read |
|---|---|---|
| Satellites reentered between Dec. 2025 and May 2026 | 260 | Units already decommissioned |
| Gen 1 portion of reentries | 176, or 67.7% | Legacy group still leads in numbers coming down |
| Gen 2 portion of reentries | 84, or 32.3% | Latest hardware also entering phased removal |
| Decommissioned and listed for removal | 349 | Next disposal wave already pending |
| Total removed or in queue | 609 | Roughly 5.7% of active Starlink satellites |
The 5.7% is based on McDowell’s Starlink tracker, counting 12,443 Starlink satellites launched and 10,759 listed as in orbit as of July 5, with 10,743 reported as working. The tracker also put 225 satellites in disposal and 1,684 down out of the total Starlink constellation.
That churn is a mixed bag for investors. Liability risk in orbit might fall, but safety rules now mean ongoing costs for making and launching replacements. With around 43 satellites dropping out of orbit each month, the 349 set for disposal would last about eight months before factoring in new satellites set to retire.
SpaceX is starting its disclosure cycle as forced buyers come in. Reuters said the stock will join the Nasdaq 100 on July 7. JPMorgan Chase NYSE:JPM put passive inflows at $4.3 billion from index funds. Morningstar NASDAQ:MORN strategist Michael Field told Reuters, “We think the stock is overvalued.” Reuters
SpaceX has been trading with a tight float, behaving like a mega-cap already. Reuters said the stock hit an intraday high of $225.64 on June 16 and finished at $153.23 on June 26. The company lost $4.9 billion last year, according to the report, and was valued near $2 trillion, close to 107 times 2025 sales. Nvidia NASDAQ:NVDA traded at about 21 times sales.
Short sellers have moved in fast. Ortex numbers Reuters cited showed short interest rising to 196 million shares, about 31% of free float, up from 83 million shares, or 13% of float, just days ago. Ortex co-founder Peter Hillerberg said the increase was “extraordinary” for a stock traded less than a month. Reuters
| Latest SpaceX filing metric | Gen 1 | Gen 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Satellites that reentered over six months | 176 | 84 |
| Total propulsive maneuvers | 65,137 | 142,015 |
| Yearly average maneuvers for each satellite | About 36 | About 46 |
| Outages in collision-avoidance system | 6 | 16 |
The maneuver count gives a look at the actual operating burden inside Starlink, not just the total satellite number. SpaceX said its collision-avoidance threshold is set at 3e-7, tighter than the industry standard of 1e-4. According to the company, Gen 2 satellites carried out more than twice the number of propulsive maneuvers as Gen 1 over the period.
Regulatory risk is tied to these same figures. The standard approach burns up dead satellites before they can turn into long-term debris. But there’s ongoing research into what routine reentries are adding to the upper atmosphere. Chris Maloney, a researcher at CIRES, said building out low-Earth-orbit fleets on a large scale “might actually start influencing the middle atmosphere.” CIRES
The filing showed two Gen 1 and two Gen 2 disposal failures between late March and mid-June, all blamed on hardware problems. SpaceX said it found sensitive components in one Gen 2 failure and pulled them from new designs.
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