SpaceX's Starlink Targets More than 1,000 Communications Satellites in Extremely Low Orbit – TechCrunch

SpaceX The planned communications satellite constellation, known as Starlink, will now target a much lower orbit than originally planned, at least for more than a thousand satellites, the company said in a FCC filing. This move is expected to help mitigate orbital debris and provide a better signal to terrestrial users of the company.

Starlink plans to launch 1,584 satellites – about one-third of the 4,409 satellites launched by the company – in orbit just 550 kilometers from the Earth's surface. In comparison, many communications satellites are in orbits more than twice as high and geosynchronous orbits are more than 20 times farther (about 36,000 miles).

At this distance, the orbits disintegrate rapidly, falling into the atmosphere and burning up after a handful of years. But SpaceX is not discouraged; In fact, he wrote in his application, the lower orbits offer "several attractive features both in nominal operation and in the unlikely event that something goes wrong".

In the first place, orbital debris problems are naturally mitigated by the fact that anything in this low orbit will fall quickly to Earth instead of cluttering the orbit. Secondly, this should shorten the time needed to send and receive a satellite signal – the time could be as low as 15 milliseconds, the company said. And 500 kilometers less mean that there will be less propagation for beam communications.

Satellites will have to do more work to stay at their optimum altitude, because the atmospheric drag will be greater, and everyone will be able to see and serve less of the planet. But with thousands of people working together, it should be manageable.

This decision is based on experimental data provided by the "Tintin" test satellites that the company launched earlier this year. "SpaceX has learned to mitigate the disadvantages of operating at a lower altitude and to take advantage of the notorious and important benefits discussed above," he writes.

This change may offer competitive advantages when satellite communications become more widely used, but this is likely to result in more intensive maintenance as Starlink's birds continue to disappear. Fortunately, the third advantage of lower orbit is that it is easier to reach, although it is probably not so easy for the company to break even.

Starlink is targeting the first real launches of its systems at the beginning of next year, although this calendar is a bit too ambitious. But SpaceX can do ambitious.