If you thought Tesla making cars more deadly than Ford Pinto was bad, after lying to the public and regulators the whole time, have I got news for you.
SpaceX filed with the FCC to launch up to one million satellites. The filing contains no deployment schedule, no cost estimate, no hardware specifications, and no satellite mass. It contains the phrase “Kardashev Type II civilization” and requests to waive every milestone requirement.
The FCC is accepting public comments. The deadline is unpublished, meaning it could close without notice.
Objection, Objection
The FCC has categorically excluded satellites from environmental review since 1986. The GAO recommended the agency revisit this. The FCC agreed they would, then started making the exemption permanent instead. Chairman Brendan Carr is formally arguing that orbital operations are “extraterritorial” and things falling on the U.S. are outside the scope of U.S. environmental law. It’s like a factory arguing their smoke stack is so tall it’s the next town’s problem.
There are roughly 15,000 satellites in orbit. Starlink already tangled up 300,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in 2025. That rate doubles every six months. A January 2026 study calculated that if any avoidance maneuvers failed, a catastrophic collision would occur within 2.8 days. Does anyone remember that in 2018 that window was 121 days? Now imagine the window after trying to fill 100X more satellites into the same space.
Last week, researchers published the first direct measurement of what happens when a satellite or rocket burns up overhead. One Falcon 9 upper stage dumped about 30 kg of lithium into the upper atmosphere—roughly 400 days’ worth of what arrives naturally from meteors. Along with the lithium: aluminum, copper, and lead. These metals stick around. They settle into the stratosphere, where aluminum oxides interact with the ozone layer in ways researchers have flagged but cannot yet quantify.
Every satellite ever launched comes back down and burns up. That has been the disposal plan, not unlike when everyone dumped barrels of toxins into the ocean. At a million satellites with five-year lifespans, you get about 550 burning up per day, each one shedding metal pollution into the air above your head. We know this is happening because scientists proved it for the first time seven days ago. We do not know what it does at scale because nobody has studied it yet. Nobody has studied it because the FCC has never required a study.
Environmental review under the current framework, despite the obviousness of the need, still is not triggered.
How to Object
Go to the FCC CORES portal. Create an account. File a comment on application SAT-LOA-20260108-00016.
Demand environmental review under NEPA before any approval. There is also a Reflect Orbital filing (satellites with giant mirrors beaming sunlight to Earth at night) with a March 6 deadline.
The request is simple: make the FCC comply with the law Congress passed in 1969 requiring agencies to assess environmental consequences before acting. A categorical exclusion written for a few hundred satellites does not hold above 1,000 let alone 100K. A million? Fuhgetaboutit.