TerreStar Launches World's Largest Telecom Satellite

An anonymous reader sends news that TerreStar-1, the largest satellite ever made for the purpose of telecommunications, successfully launched earlier this week from a European spaceport. Its launch weight was 6,910 kg, and it is "distinguished by a giant, 60-foot (18-meter) wide S-band antenna that will be unfurled in the coming weeks. Once the satellite's two solar wings are deployed, TerreStar-1 is expected to have a wingspan of about 106 feet (32.4 meters). ... It is designed to provide mobile voice and data communications in North America to smartphone-size handsets using the 2-gigahertz, or S-band, portion of the radio spectrum. The system is designed to function with a network of ground-based signal amplifiers to permit service in areas the satellite cannot reach, such as urban canyons and areas outside the line-of-sight view of the spacecraft." Video and details of the launch are available from the ESA.

Line of Sight?

[girlintraining]

LOS will be lost in most of any downtown urban region. Tall skyscrapers eat signals, film at 11. And under bridges. Or inside. Anything beamed from geosyncronous orbit's going to be very weak. How do you think it'll work reaching into a staircase in a 50 story skyscraper? Or in a grocery store? S-Band is the same band WiFi uses, and you need a pringles can to get more than a mile. What do you think the signal attenuation's going to be on something 26,200 miles away? O.o

Yeah. Ground based relay stations. You're gonna need 'em.

Re:"from a European spaceport"

[myrrdyn]

Uh, French Guiana is part of the French Republic and is part of European Union... so it's a South American territory of the European Union.
Politics vs. Geography 1 - 0 :-)

Re:Interesting Market

[tomhudson]

Many people are wondering wtf would anyone use this for... and interestingly enough I was just watching a news report that was describing why ranchers out in the middle of nowhere were against the US government's upcoming law that may require them to tag and track every beef cattle during its travel from the birth canal to the slaughter house. Most ranchers said they have no way of uploading tagging and tracking data when out in the middle of their 1000 acre land, and would cause most small beef producers to go out of business because they couldn't be compliant with the law.

Their arguments were all straw-man arguments. For the one you cite, they could have scanned, then uploaded the data when they returned to the homestead. Onoe of their other arguments was that they couldn't get the cattle into a truck with one hand and hold the scanner with the other - also a straw man - you can just hang the RFID tag reader on the truck's ramp and let it read the tags as the cattle enter the truck - but a 5-cent zip tie or a strip of duct-tape is unthinkable.

Re:Smeone's been drinking too much Red Bull ...

[ceoyoyo]

If you're going to call something on an absorbent pad a wing because it bears a passing resemblance to a real wing then you shouldn't have a problem calling satellite solar panels wings - they look much more like real wings.

Re:Line of Sight?

[Dun Malg]

it could offer seamless transitions from local cellular, voip over wifi, and satellite based communication

I've used portable satcom equipment before, and I guarantee the transition won't be seamless. When your conversation switches from terrestrial antenna (1 mile) to geostationary relay (44K mile round trip), you are able to discern a subtle change and conversational timing when the latency goes up to HALF A FUCKING SECOND.