Vantor (formerly Maxar) has published an image taken by the WorldView Legion satellite. It shows the Starlink satellite with the serial number 35956. It recently suffered an accident that will lead to its imminent demise.
Starlink-35956 was launched on November 23, 2025. On December 17, when the spacecraft was at an altitude of 418 km, it stopped communicating with Earth. According to an official statement, it experienced a sharp drop in fuel tank pressure, and the semi-major axis of its orbit decreased by 4 km. Several dozen fragments were also separated from the spacecraft, which was later confirmed by independent observers.
The Starlink-35956 accident was not caused by a collision with space debris and was internal in nature. It appears to have been caused by a leak from the fuel tank.
Later, Vantor published an image of the problematic satellite. It was taken by WorldView-3 a day after the accident, when Starlink-35956 was over Alaska. The shooting distance was 241 km, and the image resolution was 12 cm/pixel.
The image shows that Starlink-35956 has remained intact. However, despite its apparent external well-being, the device is doomed. Control over it has been lost, and it is now spinning uncontrollably. In the near future, the satellite will enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Since Starlink devices are designed to be destroyed in the atmosphere, their fall should not pose a threat.
We previously reported on another dangerous incident involving Starlink. Recently, one of the system’s satellites narrowly avoided a collision with a Chinese satellite.
