SpaceX's Train of Satellites Creates Temporary 'Mega-Constellation' (geekwire.com) 66
"SpaceX's unorthodox card-dealing launch of 60 Starlink broadband satellites has led to an unusual viewing opportunity for skywatchers -- and an occasion to wonder about the impact of such mega-constellations on the natural night sky," reports GeekWire:
A video captured by satellite-watcher Marco Langbroek in the Netherlands sums up the awe... It didn't take long for Langbroek and other skywatchers to work out the coordinates for the long train of satellites, and to plug those coordinates into online satellite-pass calculators such as CalSky. On Twitter, David Dickinson, author of "The Universe Today: Ultimate Guide to Viewing the Cosmos," started doling out location-specific sighting predictions based on the Orbitron satellite-tracking program.
CalSky automatically picks up your coordinates for satellite sightings, but for those in the Seattle area, the best time to look for the Starlink train passing by tonight is likely to be in the range of 10:50 to 11:10 p.m. PT, going from southwest to northeast. That's a liberal stretch of time that accounts for a range of locations (say, Port Townsend vs. North Bend), plus uncertainties in the orbital estimates. There are other passes overnight at around 12:30, 3:50 and 5:20 a.m. PT. The brightness of the satellites is a question mark. Some say they can be seen with the naked eye, while others advise scanning with binoculars. A lot depends on how the satellites pick up the glint of the sun after dusk or before dawn. Tonight Langbroek reported that the satellite train wasn't as bright as it was the night before.
Speaking of brightness, astronomers and SpaceX fans have already begun the debate over the prospect of having thousands of broadband-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit. The 60 satellites launched this week merely represent the beginning of a campaign aimed at launching as many as 11,000 such spacecraft. And that's just for SpaceX's Starlink system. Thousands more could go into orbit for the constellations being contemplated by OneWeb, Telesat, LeoSat Enterprises and Amazon's Project Kuiper.
Today Elon Musk tweeted defensively that "sats will be in darkness when stars are visible" -- while GeekWire points out that the satellites are also scheduled to spread. "Within just a few days, the tightly spaced 'train' will turn into a dispersed chain that girdles the globe," their article concludes.
"And once that happens, chances are that skywatchers and sky-worriers alike will turn their attention to the next batch of Starlink satellites."
CalSky automatically picks up your coordinates for satellite sightings, but for those in the Seattle area, the best time to look for the Starlink train passing by tonight is likely to be in the range of 10:50 to 11:10 p.m. PT, going from southwest to northeast. That's a liberal stretch of time that accounts for a range of locations (say, Port Townsend vs. North Bend), plus uncertainties in the orbital estimates. There are other passes overnight at around 12:30, 3:50 and 5:20 a.m. PT. The brightness of the satellites is a question mark. Some say they can be seen with the naked eye, while others advise scanning with binoculars. A lot depends on how the satellites pick up the glint of the sun after dusk or before dawn. Tonight Langbroek reported that the satellite train wasn't as bright as it was the night before.
Speaking of brightness, astronomers and SpaceX fans have already begun the debate over the prospect of having thousands of broadband-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit. The 60 satellites launched this week merely represent the beginning of a campaign aimed at launching as many as 11,000 such spacecraft. And that's just for SpaceX's Starlink system. Thousands more could go into orbit for the constellations being contemplated by OneWeb, Telesat, LeoSat Enterprises and Amazon's Project Kuiper.
Today Elon Musk tweeted defensively that "sats will be in darkness when stars are visible" -- while GeekWire points out that the satellites are also scheduled to spread. "Within just a few days, the tightly spaced 'train' will turn into a dispersed chain that girdles the globe," their article concludes.
"And once that happens, chances are that skywatchers and sky-worriers alike will turn their attention to the next batch of Starlink satellites."
Mmm Hmm (Score:2)
"And once that happens, chances are that skywatchers and sky-worriers alike will turn their attention to the next batch of Starlink satellites."
Sky-worriers? Cheese and rice. Give it a name.
Re: (Score:2)
What do you mean, "Flash Gordon approach?" Open Fire! Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to recover the body.
Re: These aren't Internet connection satellites... (Score:1)
Re:These aren't Internet connection satellites... (Score:4)
I mean seriously, 500 pounds worth of electronics for WiFi?!?
Does your WiFi have a 800 km range at multiple megabits?
Re: (Score:2)
I mean seriously, 500 pounds worth of electronics for WiFi?!?
Does your WiFi have a 800 km range at multiple megabits?
Just wait until the sky is full of these things, the noise floor shoots way up.and the services near those frequencies are destroyed
It'll be great.
Re: (Score:2)
Before getting FCC permission to launch, they must show that they will not interfere with existing satellite services.
Re: (Score:3)
Before getting FCC permission to launch, they must show that they will not interfere with existing satellite services.
The F.C.C. is not a technical agency any more. It's part of the new politics based physics.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Iridium? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Iridium? (Score:5, Informative)
The Iridium NEXT constellation is at only 780km, and there about 70 of them up there already. Granted 12,000 is a lot more than 70.
Re: (Score:2)
Iridium is ridiculously expensive because it uses expensive satellites launched (previously) with expensive rockets. Also, Iridium was about coverage, not latency. You'd talk to the satellite, which would link to a ground station, and from there your link would be via regular telecom.
Musk is proposing satellite-to-satellite routing with emphasis on latency. Skipping the slowdown in ground fibre optic.
Re: (Score:3)
Bandwidth is an issue for Iridium NEXT (and most past communications constellations), thus limiting the number of users they can allow before the system hits its limit. They often have some pretty severe bottlenecks both in terms of inter-satellite communications and ground station communications. It sounds like these mega constellations get around a lot of that by spreading out their down-links far more and nullifying the inter-satellite bottleneck by using laser communications. And the term "ground sta
It eliminates them completely (Score:5, Informative)
Low-altitude satellite internet will beat optic fibre for latency in many cases. Light travels in optic fibre at 0.7 C - it is slowed down to 2.3 of the speed of light in vacuum. The final starlink sats will send data using lasers in space - which will travel at C. So the signals don't have to travel far from point-to-point to 'pay' for the 1000km trip up to the satellite and back down again.
Latency is a factor in current satellite internet because currently, the satellites are in geostationary orbits - 32,000 km up. Moving them down to 500km fixes that.
Re: (Score:2)
The final starlink sats will send data using lasers in space - which will travel at C.
The final sharklink sats will send data using lasers in space - which will travel at much more than C.
"which will travel at much more than C" = BS (Score:2)
Nothing travels at much more than C - or even just a tiny little pinch more - absolutely nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, probably a joke.
"Faster than C" early on a Sunday morning didn't tickle my funny bone.
In re reading, I think it says the SATS will go much faster than C
Shark in the C ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
it's Morse Code from Elon Musk ... (Score:1)
telling the Security and Exchange Commission [expletive redacted]
Re: (Score:2)
telling the Security and Exchange Commission [expletive redacted]
No, not enough morse characters for that. I started decoding it but stopped after the first word. I expect it says "Drink Ovaltine".
Once the novelty wears off (Score:1, Troll)
People who watch the sky will track these just like they already track all the other man-made objects currently orbiting the earth, and the rest of the people won't care much one way or the other.
Yeah, it complicates being an astronomer a bit more, but welcome to modern life. This is just another aspect of technological progress - the same sort of progress that gave us Hubble, and that lets us make the incredibly uniform mirrors used in modern telescopes.
Re: (Score:2)
Just another excuse... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If SpaceX's price for service is competitive with any land-based ISPs, this will gut the current suppliers of airborne and maritime internet service. Huge win for fishermen and commercial crew.
Up to gigabit service, or as little as 6 megabit service. No word on pricing, but industry watchers predict ~$60/month US for tens of megabits. Aiming for a $200 price point for the ground station, though reportedly they were having problems meeting that goal. SpaceX could certainly charge less, but considering their primary market has no option at all for any other broadband, there's no reason to believe they won't choose the going rate, for the time being. Charging less leaves money on the table, at a