Wild solar weather is causing satellites to plummet from orbit.It will get worse

schwit1 writes: The change coincided with the onset of the new solar cycle, and experts think it might be the beginning of some difficult years.

"In the last five, six years, the satellites were sinking about two and a half kilometers [1.5 miles] a year," Anja Stromme, ESA's Swarm mission manager, told Space.com. "But since December last year, they have been virtually diving. The sink rate between December and April has been 20 kilometers [12 miles] per year."

"Generally speaking, increasing solar activity — and its effect on the upper atmosphere — is good news from a space debris perspective, as it reduces orbital lifetimes of the debris and provides a useful 'cleaning service,'" Lewis said.