— Michael Nicolls (@michaelnicollsx) December 20, 2025 “Additional data suggest that there is a small number of trackable debris objects from the event, and we expect the satellite and debris to reenter and fully demise within weeks,” Nicolls wrote. Former astronaut Ed Lu, founder & Chief Technology Officer of Leolabs, a company that provides real-time orbital tracking data, said the company’s radar had detected hundreds of objects. “As per usual, these objects tend to spread out along the orbital track, and have already spread out over 6000km,” said Lu. In its original social media post, SpaceX said it was taking the incident very seriously: “Our engineers are rapidly working to root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event.” The satellites for the Starlink 6-88 were already at the launch pad inside the rocket’s payload fairing, but were returned to SpaceX’s processing facility at HangarX on Dec. 19 in the wake of the in-orbit incident, presumably to allow modifications. Sunday’s Falcon 9 rocket launch, the first from Florida in 2026, will add 29 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites to the megaconstellation which now numbers more than 9,300 satellite in orbit, according to stats maintained by astronomer and expert orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell. On Saturday, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 30 percent chance for favorable weather at the opening of the launch window, which improves to 70 percent as time goes on. Meteorologists said a cold front will be moving through the area during the launch opportunity. “Model solutions have great agreement on timing with the worst weather likely occurring at the front of the window, as band of showers (that likely triggers the Cumulus Cloud Rule) moves through around midnight,” launch weather officers wrote. “There is also good model agreement for improvement into the window, with lingering thick clouds being the main concern by the end.” SpaceX will launch the Starlink 6-88 mission on a brand new Falcon 9 booster, as the company continues to add to its fleet. There were eight new boosters that debuted in 2025 and six introduced in 2024. The new booster, believed to bear the tail number of 1101, will target at landing on a drone ship, called ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ positioned in the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast of The Bahamas, about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. If all goes well, this will be the 147th landing on this vessel and the 555th booster landing for SpaceX to date. Building on records The midnight flight planned for Sunday comes after a year of big growth for the Starlink component of SpaceX’s business. In its annual progress report published just after the new year, SpaceX said it closed out 2025 with a total of more than nine million global customers across more than 155 countries and markets. It said it had added more than 35 new markets over the year as well as 4.6 million customers. This year, we activated Starlink in 35+ new markets, and are now covering 155+ countries and a global area home to 3.2 billion people, including those who live in some of the most remote places on Earth pic.twitter.com/DaDeFKDX9t