SpaceX Launches 60 New Starlink Satellites, Sticks Rocket Landing At Sea (space.com) 66
After several weather delays, SpaceX successfully launched its fourth batch of Starlink satellites into orbit and nailed a rocket landing today. Space.com reports: A sooty Falcon 9 rocket -- which made its third flight with this launch -- roared to life at 9:06 a.m. EST (1406 GMT), lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here in Florida. The rocket carried 60 more Starlink satellites for SpaceX's growing constellation, the second such launch by the company this month. The satellites all successfully deployed about an hour after liftoff.
The star of this mission, the Falcon 9 first stage dubbed B1051.3 by SpaceX, previously lofted a Crew Dragon capsule as part of the company's uncrewed mission to the space station (Demo-1) as well as a trio of Earth-observing satellites for Canada. Following the successful launch, the rocket's first stage gently touched down on a SpaceX's drone ship landing platform "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Atlantic Ocean, marking the company's 49th booster recovery. [...] Today's launch is part of SpaceX's goal of connecting the globe with its Starlink network. Each satellite is identical, weighing in at roughly 485 lbs. (220 kg), and is part of a larger network that aims to provide internet coverage to the world below. With this launch, it brings SpaceX's burgeoning constellation up to 240, making it the largest in orbit to date.
The star of this mission, the Falcon 9 first stage dubbed B1051.3 by SpaceX, previously lofted a Crew Dragon capsule as part of the company's uncrewed mission to the space station (Demo-1) as well as a trio of Earth-observing satellites for Canada. Following the successful launch, the rocket's first stage gently touched down on a SpaceX's drone ship landing platform "Of Course I Still Love You" in the Atlantic Ocean, marking the company's 49th booster recovery. [...] Today's launch is part of SpaceX's goal of connecting the globe with its Starlink network. Each satellite is identical, weighing in at roughly 485 lbs. (220 kg), and is part of a larger network that aims to provide internet coverage to the world below. With this launch, it brings SpaceX's burgeoning constellation up to 240, making it the largest in orbit to date.
Repetitive. (Score:2)
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It's the Cult of Musk. It's getting very boring.
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It's the ghost of the old Slashdot. News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Nerds care about every rocket launch, because rockets!
They had a brief live feed of Ms Tree catching a fairing, first time we saw that. Always something new to see.
Flip the switch (Score:1)
How many of these things are needed to light up the network?
Re:Flip the switch (Score:4, Interesting)
Expect about 10 launches (600) for commercial service. It may come sooner to a narrow band straddling the US/Canada border for beta.
I would not expect a long beta as SpaceX needs the cashflow to fund Mars.
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" It may come sooner to a narrow band straddling the US/Canada border for beta."
What kind of orbit covers just the US/Canada border?
Geostationary orbits do a fixed position on the equator.
Orbits (Re:Flip the switch) (Score:4, Interesting)
Geostationary orbits do a fixed position on the equator.
These are orbiting far lower than that.
What kind of orbit covers just the US/Canada border?
None. But they have to start somewhere. Somewhere that there will be enough satellites in place to create a viable network. Somewhere that they can expect to get the highest revenue first. This will likely be a coverage band over USA and Canada, as well as a lot of ocean and places that they don't expect to find many paying customers through the rest of the orbit.
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The sats are in low Earth orbit, though much higher than most LEO sats once they're done climbing. Technically, coverage must be a range a lattutudes centered on the equator. Where to do the beta is a business decision, rather than a technical one.
The first big market for Starlink is the hop from the New Your markets to the London markets. Just that hop will fund SpaceX fully, everything else is gravy. So I expect they'll be testing at similar lattitudes.
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Have they announced pricing yet?
It's going to be hard to price. On the one hand they don't want to make it too popular because it doesn't have the bandwidth for densely populated areas. On the other hand they don't want to make it more expensive than people outside the US and Europe are willing to pay.
Also have they announced what the receiver hardware will be like? They said pizza box size and needs a view of the sky but that seems like the usual Musk optimism.
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Nothing official yet. The real first customers will be market traders, and I'm sure the pricing will be millions per month. I'd guess they'll initially restrict other customers to sparsely populated rural areas, rather than attempting to price normal people out of the market.
As they build the network they can take on a very large number of customers, though city density will be hard. But their goal of 10,000s of sats is probably out of reach until Starship is real.
"Pizza box sized an view of the sky" sou
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I doubt market traders will be interested. They don't just need low latency, they need consistent latency. Starlink is both shared bandwidth per satellite and base station and also shared radio spectrum. In fact they would probably be worried about someone with a jammer taking out their connection at a critical moment.
That's why they use dedicated fibre optic links to the exchange. In fact they have giant coils of fibre optic cable so that everyone using one gets the same latency to keep it fair, no matter
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The point of Starlink is the low-latency hop between markets. There's a private overseas cable between New York and London laid at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, just to shave 5 milliseconds [popularmechanics.com] off the latency. Starlink will be much lower latency than anything today. This is what Musk is talking about when he says the first few launches will make SpaceX self-funding. The other 10,000s of sats are because he also cares about providing a solution to poor rural areas, not for the funds they'll b
Hope Starlink Works (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully Starlink will live up to expectations. It would let me semi-retire to Peru, working on projects from my home office, something that's not possible with current satellite Internet connectivity.
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Peru has internet providers, why do you use lack of orbital one as excuse?
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Sure, but this guy is complaining about the 3G-ish data rate he gets there being bad for video calls. Sounds like a first worlder bringing his first world problems with him. Here's an idea, make calls without video, worked great for over a century. I don't want to see my coworker or contractor's butt ugly mugs and probably his don't either.
Re:Hope Starlink Works (Score:4, Informative)
Paruro doesn't. It's only 50 kilometers in a straight line from Cusco, but there are no straight lines there so it's a 2 hour (dry season) drive. Incredibly beautiful, and the meat we're cooking on Sunday was eating grass on Saturday, but the only Internet connectivity is either satellite or flaky 3G cellular that is frequently too congested to even allow WhatsApp video calls.
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You obviously have never eaten a freshly slaughtered chicken or sheep that has been wandering around eating what it finds. It's a totally different critter than a feedlot beef, not even close. If we eat aged meat in Peru it's 'charqui', naturally air dried mutton or alpaca (Paruro is at 10,000 feet altitude, the air is very dry). It's a very unique flavor and texture.
As a vegetarian you might appreciate the 2,000 different varieties (really) of potatoes that are grown in Peru, the scores of different swe
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Why the dickishness?
Re: Hope Starlink Works (Score:1)
Re: Hope Starlink Works (Score:1)
Re: Hope Starlink Works (Score:2)
Why the dickishness?
If it's any consolation, this is the only place I "unzip" anymore.
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Hopefully Starlink will live up to expectations. It would let me semi-retire to Peru, working on projects from my home office, something that's not possible with current satellite Internet connectivity.
Peru? In my town (rural northern AZ), loaded with high-end retirees, good broadband is available only on the main streets that are served by cable. We have lots of secluded back streets where people who have built 4,000 sq. ft. homes in gated communities can only get the speed equivalent of 1985 dialup from crappy edge-of-range DSL or in many cases nothing but a wireless relay ISP. If these data-poor folks pooled their money, they could, and would probably be willing to, buy one of these Starlink launches
company's 49th booster recovery (Score:2)
Re:company's 49th booster recovery (Score:4, Insightful)
And total number of launches are much more that covering SpaceX launches is about as exciting as covering someone driving to Pittsburg.
Yes, in the same sense that there was once a time when getting your Conestoga wagon to western Pennsylvania in mere weeks used to be a newsworthy event. That was how the launch business worked before SpaceX.
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I watch every rocket launch. Everyone one in the world (though not necessarily live), except the Chinese launches, because they never have feeds worth watching, just 2-minute "everything went great!" videos after. It's called being a nerd. It's what differentiates us from geek posers.
Tomorrow should be the next Electron launch by Rocket Labs, if it doesn't slip. They're cranking them out pretty fast now. Everyone one is cool. Can't wait to see if they take another step towards recovery. Always someth
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It was that 49th booster recovery that caught my eye too. I think it's amazing that this is now getting to seem routine, when not long ago it was uncertain if it was possible. I love living in the future!
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Transparency, neato!
Another nail in astronomy's coffin (Score:2)
Re:Another nail in astronomy's coffin (Score:4, Insightful)
We're spending hundreds of millions on cutting-edge telescopes while concurrently spending billions to blast view-destroying satellites into orbit. Sad.
A globally interconnected world is about cost equivalent with the 1 James Webb Telescope. The James Webb Telescope budget is ~10 Billion, has grown from $1.6 Billion and still expected to grow. Each Starlink launch of 60 satellites is at most ~90 million. That is a ~62 Million launch cost + $500K per satellite. Real launch costs are probably much lower since SpaceX is it's own customer. Assuming the maximum cost for the full 12,000 satellite installation then you would be correct. $18 Billion vs $10 Billion. However the costs for SpaceX are going down over time which is how they probably arrived at their $10 Billion estimate for total deployment. (I only checked Wikipedia).
I would like to see James Webb working since Hubble has been a true inspiration but I think a truly globally connected world is a much more amazing achievement. My other hope would be with the commercialization of space there are now opportunities to radically reduce the costs and increase the capabilities of orbital astronomy.
Give it up (Score:1)
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If you can't admit your own grievous error [slashdot.org], then why expect "the majority" to do any better?
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As a mostly former astronomer, I think this is a pointless fight.
The reason we build monster telescopes on earth is that it's too expensive to build them in space. Virtual telescopes have shown to work exceptionally well. The next major advance in astronomy is going to be a lot of little telescopes in orbit, above the atmosphere, forming a virtual telescope the size of the planet. This is something that will be affordable precisely because of what SpaceX is doing. In fact, I almost wonder if you couldn't pi
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I almost wonder if you couldn't piggy-back on this network to get the images back down.
For far less than the cost of Webb astronomers could do what SpaceX is doing right now. Launch a giant pile of small telescopes, and make a network out of them.
Why not do both?
If someone could figure out a telescope "module" that could be mounted on the back (outward facing) side of the StarLink satellites, you could probably get them launched by Musk himself for free.
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We're spending hundreds of millions on cutting-edge telescopes while concurrently spending billions to blast view-destroying satellites into orbit. Sad.
I don't find this sad at all. I'm not a professional astronomer but I'm quite sure that the best views of the stars and planets will be found from outside the Earth's atmosphere. To launch big telescopes will first require launching a bunch of little "view destroying" satellites. Each launch brings down the cost of the next launch.
I'm hoping that a flight to a telescope in orbit will soon become as routine as a flight to a telescope in Hawaii.
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I'm hoping that a flight to a telescope in orbit will soon become as routine as a flight to a telescope in Hawaii.
Putting up a new orbital telescope will soon be considerably easier than installing a new telescope in Hawaii. In orbit, there's no one to complain about their 'sacred' mountain (that they've been ignoring for 5 generations).
I'm sure some asshole will try to block the installation of the first Lunar telescope though. Despite it being on the far side of Luna.
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Short-sighted much? Bad habit for an astronomer!
Starship will bring launch costs down to where orbital telescopes are within reach of amateur astronomers, and you're whining about temporary effects on Earth-bound telescopes while the Starlink sats raise their orbits and change their facing.
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Re: stop polluting the sky! (Score:3)
This is a joke, right? At full network size, years from now, it'll only 3x the number of manmade objects in orbit. How often does an object in orbit ruin your view at present? My experience with my telescope is "virtually never".
Re:stop polluting the sky! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not necessarily. Most of the dramatic videos and photos posted so far are from the "starlink trains" shortly after release, before the satellites have gotten into their deployed configuration, where the albedo is reduced. They've also been working on further reducing the albedo, experimenting with coatings and the like. It's hard to say what the final impact of the constellation will be for amateur astronomy because we don't know how effective the final mitigation strategies will be. Professional astronomy will have the problem solved in software, as it already is for existing satellites.
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I'd like to see them in a telescope.
One of the coolest things during my trip to the Galapagos was seeing satellites fly over in the darkest sky I've ever witnessed. It was crazy, as good as the islands and fauna.
Put telescopes in space (Hubble for instance), beyond low orbit. Make them big (build it on a moon base).
Global internet is worth that. Setec Astronomy.. And VPNs.
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The moon is also great for an optical telescope because you have lots and lots of materials that you can refine into gigantic mirrors right there on-site without having to launch them anywhere.
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can't see shit without one of these starlinks crossing the scope
Boo hoo! It is not like we are still using silver-halide photographic plates on the end of the telescope.
Electronic cameras can easily scan many "frames" to combine, and exclude the spoiled ones.
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Electronic cameras can easily scan many "frames" to combine, and exclude the spoiled ones.
Yes, but only at the expense of image quality. You get more sampling noise in the final image from combining many short frames compared to fewer long ones. Each frame contributes a certain amount of noise to the final product and you can't overcome that by throwing more frames at the problem. You need individual frames with lower noise, which means either (much) more expensive sensors or longer exposures.
To maintain image quality while filtering out these much more frequent and visible satellites streaking
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Their landings are covered during their live broadcast. You can see the landing at around 19:40:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Idiom (Score:1)
"sticks" rocket landing?
I am an educated native English speaker, but have never encountered this idiom before.
The "nailed" in TFS is a more familiar slang, but not something I'd expect to see in a professionally written article for a world-wide audience.
Is it too much to ask to stick a bit closer to using standard written English (UK or US, whatever) please?
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"Stick the landing" is a common idiom. Never watched the Olympics?
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Thanks, that phrase googles.
Olympics? I'm a nerd, why would I watch sports? Opening ceremony maybe.
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I'm a nerd, why would I watch sports?
To argue about which gymnast girl is best waifu, obviously. Although I guess a true nerd is only interested in 2D.
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Stuck the landing [google.com] gets 758k hits on Google. Nailed the landing [google.com] gets 356k.
Instead of complaining about learning phrases that you don't know, you should take it as an opportunity to learn new ones? I like it when I encounter a phrase I didn't know before. Or, to randomly insert some Icelandic phrases: you sound like you've 'totally come from the mountains'; you need to keep at it because 'nobody becomes a bishop without a beating', so 'forward with the butter'! ;)
(BTW, "sticking" a landing is an analogy to
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phrases that you don't know, you should take it as an opportunity to learn new ones?
I honestly tried! - looked up "sticks" in a couple of dictionaries, even the Urban Dictionary, and found no matching meaning.
Following lgw's tip, I then found "sticks the landing" (rocket removed) is American sports jargon. Why would you expect people on a nerd site to be familiar with sports jargon? Let alone parochial jargon.
It's bad enough when people use baseball metaphors. (Not an internationally popular game, despite the so-called World Series.)
Re: Idiom (Score:2)
I'm the most sports-ignorant person I've ever met and have used "stick the landing" plenty. Usually in the context of airplanes making a good landing.
I don't know how you managed to go through life without learning this very common phrase, but you should be happy that you learned something new rather than whining about it.
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As an educated native English speaker I can tell you that it is accepted English though it's not something you might say every day. Then again I don't go around every day saying I have nailed something either.
You must not be a native "English" speaker is all I can presume. Maybe you speak American English or some other variant of English rather than actual English :-)
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It isn't an idiom or informal in the dictionary I just consulted. And the definition is regularly used in the US. "Q: Where do you want this? A: Stick it over there."
Nice try, but that verb would apply to the rocket, not the landing. The meaning is not in the word, but in the phrase "stick the landing", making it an idiom, like "beating a dead horse" :-)
Next stop Mars! (Score:1)
Great, when can we get service? (Score:2)
Starlink will revolutionize RV internet service. Right now the only credible option is cellular hotspot. Zero current satellite internet providers offer a self-aiming dish, let alone one that mounts to an RV. This in spite of the fact that you CAN get one for satellite TV...