Probably exactly that. If you take a single 10 minute exposure (or really, anything more than a few seconds) you'll get noticeable star trails if you don't put your camera on a rotating mount. Stacking multiple exposures also has other nice benefits such as noise canceling itself out and being able to remove satellite trails.
Last time I did astrophotography was a few years ago, before Starlink made the problem considerably worse, but satellite trails were relatively easy to remove with stacking. I'm sure it's harder now but definitely still possible, so I'm assuming in this case leaving them in was done on purpose to highlight the problem.
EDIT: Looking better at the picture, I belive this was taken with a star tracker and then composited with a shorter exposure of the foreground. Notice how the foreground, even far away, looks considerably blurrier than the stars, and how the tower in the background has some light streaks. This is exactly what you'll see if you use a star tracker. Rather than star trails, you'll have "foreground trails". This would explain why there are relatively few gaps in the satellite trails, since the exposures can be much longer.