Eccentric Orbits is a really great book about their history, especially the near de-orbit with lots of fun tidbits about their fundraising and US gov response.

https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/d...

> "SpaceX goes under and the satellite fleet goes defunct" risk.

extremely unlikely considering the value of the assets already deployed in space. One scenario is a debtor-in-possession arrangement via bankruptcy court.

Another thing that could happen is something like what happened to the first Iridium corporation's bankruptcy, where a group of investors formed a "new" Iridium corporation and stepped in, via the bankruptcy court, to take it over. Google "iridium bankruptcy" for more details. Also this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/d...

The full picture of what killed Iridium is written up in great detail in "Eccentric Orbits". I'm only part of the way through the book, but lots of interesting stuff in there so far.

https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/d...

There's an excellent and fascinating book that describes, among many other things, how the satellites were saved from being "de-orbited" (crashed) about 20 years ago. It's called Eccentric Orbits.

https://www.amazon.com/Eccentric-Orbits-Iridium-John-Bloom/d...