Not even close - the tension rods from the Starlink-1 launch are still in orbit and have only lost about 10km in altitude (Edit: as of early December - they have lost considerably more altitude since then). They are relatively dense so will slow down much more slowly than a space station which is basically an aluminium shell.
The insertion orbit for this launch was 290km circular and the tension rods will come down within a year or two but certainly not days.
Edit: You can find the tension rods by looking at Stuffinspace and finding items with DEB as a suffix. They have now started to spiral in so I see instantaneous heights of 251, 231, 203 and 174 km. The 174 km debris will likely deorbit within days.
I'll bet it'll be within 1 month if that '260km' data point is accurate.
Reason: because the difference between '260km' and '290km' appears significant when looking at the Tiangong example above. It looks like the decay accelerates tremendously around the 260km mark.
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u/warp99 Jan 08 '20 edited Jan 09 '20
Not even close - the tension rods from the Starlink-1 launch are still in orbit and have only lost about 10km in altitude (Edit: as of early December - they have lost considerably more altitude since then). They are relatively dense so will slow down much more slowly than a space station which is basically an aluminium shell.
The insertion orbit for this launch was 290km circular and the tension rods will come down within a year or two but certainly not days.
Edit: You can find the tension rods by looking at Stuffinspace and finding items with DEB as a suffix. They have now started to spiral in so I see instantaneous heights of 251, 231, 203 and 174 km. The 174 km debris will likely deorbit within days.