Starlink wants to decrease the orbit of its satellites to make them safer in 2026.

Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink engineering, announced on Thursday that Starlink would start reconfiguring its satellite constellation by lowering all of its satellites that are now orbiting at about 550 km (342 miles) to 480 km over the course of 2026.

The business wants to make space safer by decreasing the satellites’ orbits.

Starlink announced in December that one of its satellites had a problem in space that made a “small” amount of debris and shut off communications with the spacecraft at 418 km in altitude. This was a rare kinetic mishap in orbit for the satellite internet company.

The company reported that the satellite, which was one of about 10,000 in space for its broadband internet network, quickly plunged four kilometers in altitude, which suggests that there was some kind of explosion on board.

Nicolls wrote on the social media site X, “Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways.” He also said, “The number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision.”

In the past several years, the number of spacecraft in Earth’s orbit has risen significantly. This is because firms and countries are racing to put tens of thousands of satellites into space for things like internet constellations and other space-based services like communications and Earth images.

SpaceX is well-known for launching rockets, but with Starlink, a network of almost 10,000 satellites that provide broadband internet to homes, businesses, and governments, it has become the world’s largest satellite operator.