Starlink will move thousands of its satellites for “space safety” reasons.

Starlink said it would lower the altitude of thousands of its satellites Satellites that broadcast the Internet After a mishap with one and a near collision with the others, it’s a vivid reminder of how crowded and dangerous Earth’s orbit can be.

On New Year’s Day Share on XMichael Nichols, Starlink’s vice president of engineering, said the company will begin a “major reconfiguration of its satellite constellation” and will lower the orbit of nearly 4,400 satellites, or nearly half its total of more than 9,000, from their current altitude of about 342 miles to about 298 miles.

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“Lowering satellites condenses Starlink orbits and will increase space safety in several ways,” including “reducing the overall probability of collision,” Nichols said.

A Starlink representative did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment.

Satellite Internet is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative to terrestrial options for broadband access such as cable, fiber, and DSL, especially in rural areas. It is closely identified with Starlinka subsidiary of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, but other providers include Hughesnet and Viasat. These satellites are usually in low Earth orbit, unlike others similar to them GPS satellites Which is thousands of miles away from Earth.

In early December, the Starlink satellite came within approximately 200 meters (656 feet) of the Chinese satellite. Nichols posted on X He said the Chinese satellite was one of nine deployed days earlier, and blamed a “lack of coordination between satellite operators,” pointing to negligence by operators at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China before those nine satellites were deployed. “This needs to change,” he said in the post.

there Nearly 12,000 active satellites In orbit and thousands of others stopped working. This number is expected to rise rapidly as SpaceX continues to send up Starlink satellites and as competing Internet constellations are created by projects such as Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) and China’s Thousand Sails.

Starlink’s announcement this week comes two weeks after one of its satellites.I witnessed an anomalyIt began its “fall” towards Earth from its height of 260 miles. The company said that the object will disintegrate when it collides with the Earth’s atmosphere, and that it does not pose a threat to the International Space Station, which is also flying in low Earth orbit.

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In his X post this week, Nichols also cited the “solar minimum” as another reason for reducing the orbital altitude of his satellites. Solar minimum is the period of time when there is the least amount of solar activity – such as sunspots and solar flares – during the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle. During this phase, satellites can last longer in space because the density of the atmosphere is lower and therefore less resistance to the vehicle. But it also means more congestion for a longer period of time.

Nichols said the satellites’ “ballistic decay time” — the time it takes for the projectile to lose energy as it descends toward Earth — will fall from more than 4 years to just a few months.