SpaceX's Starlink Arrives In Antarctica, Now Available On All 7 Continents (pcmag.com) 63
With the recent addition of Antarctica, SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service is now available on all seven continents. PC Magazine reports: The company has shipped a Starlink dish to McMurdo Station, a US research facility based on an island right off the coast of Antarctica. In a tweet on Wednesday, the National Science Foundation said that scientists with the US Antarctic Program have been testing out the dish at the site to supply increased internet bandwidth. The Starlink dish promises to offer faster internet speeds to McMurdo Station, which previously relied on satellite internet from other providers. The broadband quality had to be shared over a 17Mbps connection for the entire research facility, which can house over 1,000 people. Starlink, on the other hand, can offer much faster broadband due to the lower orbits of the company's Starlink satellites. Download speeds can range from 50 to 200Mbps for residential users, and 100 to 350Mbps for business customers through a high-performance dish, which can also withstand extreme temperatures.
To serve users in Antarctica, SpaceX has been launching batches of Starlink satellites to orbit the Earth's polar regions in an effort to beam high-speed broadband to users below, including in Alaska and northern Canada. Normally, Starlink satellites fetch the internet data by relying on ground stations on the planet's surface. But last year, SpaceX began outfitting new satellites with "laser links," which can allow them to send and receive data with each other across space. This can allow the same satellites to beam broadband without relying on a ground station below.
To serve users in Antarctica, SpaceX has been launching batches of Starlink satellites to orbit the Earth's polar regions in an effort to beam high-speed broadband to users below, including in Alaska and northern Canada. Normally, Starlink satellites fetch the internet data by relying on ground stations on the planet's surface. But last year, SpaceX began outfitting new satellites with "laser links," which can allow them to send and receive data with each other across space. This can allow the same satellites to beam broadband without relying on a ground station below.
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how a satellite is launched so that it orbits a polar region
Umm, its orbit takes it over both poles?
and how that differs from the other Starlink satellites' orbits
Their orbits don't pass over both poles?
Re:"orbit the Earth's polar regions" (Score:5, Informative)
Once there are sufficient quantities of space junk ...
There is no "space junk" in the orbits where the StarLink satellites operate.
StarLink satellites orbit at 540 km where atmospheric drag deorbits junk.
The space junk is mostly 800 km and higher.
Re:"orbit the Earth's polar regions" (Score:4, Insightful)
That's incorrect. Yes, drag tends to deorbit space junk at 540 km - but at that altitude that takes several years.
The ISS is hit by space junk at an average frequency of 1/day - and the ISS orbits at about 400 km.
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Starlinks aren't "space junk" because they are under control and will actively adjust their orbits to get out of the way of anything else. They are intentionally deorbited at end of life so they never become space junk.
The Starlinks that fail before deorbiting are space junk, but they deorbit on their own relatively quickly, and failures of that type are quite rare. So no more than a handful at a time.
A handful of pieces of space junk in an area 550 million square kilometres in size. Kessel Syndrome it
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If they're damaged such that their systems can't actively deorbit, they will absolutely become space debris. Their launches also generate space debris. Though, in fairness, SpaceX launches tend to generate much less debris that equivalent launches by other providers. But that positive is somewhat mitigated by the incredible launch cadence they're using. Though this will potentially be mitigated if Starship ever flies.
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The sky is big and satellites are small. Kessler syndrome doesn't result in a thick shroud of debris. But when everything is moving at relative speeds of ~14km/s, even millimeter sized particles hit with the force of anti-tank rounds. Kessler syndrome is about the average time until such an impact falling so low that any satellite launch will be rendered inoperable within a short period of time. So instead of staying active for decades, satellites won't remain active for more than a week.
Re:"orbit the Earth's polar regions" (Score:5, Informative)
The 53 degree starlinks travel over populated countries and talk with ground stations in the supported countries. The polar satellites use lasers to communicate with 53 degree satellites that have laser and ground station connectivity. In this way the Poles get internet access.
Look at this website to see all the 53 degree satellites and the fewer 97.7 degree polar satellites. Rotate the map to the poles and you will see the 90 degree orbits. https://heavens-above.com/Star... [heavens-above.com]
There are even some Starlinks on 70 degree orbits which cover as far north as Alaska and as far south as the Antarctic Coast.
Re: "orbit the Earth's polar regions" (Score:2)
By you're definition... no satellites orbit over America... You're concept of orbit as flying a circle over region of a sphere's surface is a bit... I don't know how to put it... Instead orbit means it traverses a full loop around a sphere... So yes, there are polar orbits...
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You've confused your misreading of the article for what the article said. The orbits do indeed fly in a circle over the polar regions. They are roughly circular orbits, so they're flying in a circle. Those circles cross over both polar regions. So, they are circular orbits that orbit the polar regions.
Most orbits aren't geostationary. The satellites appear to move across the sky when viewed from the Earth.
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No, when we say something orbits another thing, we do NOT mean it "crosses over" that other thing.
I am misreading nothing.
Your English is incorrect.
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You tried to argue that an incorrect statement was correct by accusing ME of misreading it, and now you are arguing instead that it's okay because it's colloquial language ?!
FFS, up your game.
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So these satellites do not "orbit the polar regions", but - unlike the other Starlink satellites - their orbits are inclined so that they pass over the polar regions.
That's how all satellites work. They orbit a celestial body, not a region of a celestial body.
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Exactly.
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The launches out of Ve
They mean, 'they are in polar orbits.' (Score:5, Informative)
'Polar orbits" are orbits with an angle near 90, orbiting at near right angles to the equator, instead of at a small angle. These satellites are orbiting at 97.6, which means they orbit slightly retrograde. This is done because most satellites in polar orbits want that launch angle (or inclination) so they can be 'sun synchronous', which means that the orbit constantly changes so that it remains at the same angle to the sun.
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Yes, exactly.
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Eh... somewhat. That's a mostly true statement and it's understandable why you wouldn't want to go into the full thing. They're also inclined like that because of variations in the Earth's gravity field due to differences in density and things like mountains disrupting a perfect orbit. Planets aren't perfectly smooth spheres of uniform density.
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And they also wouldn't launch into a 90 degree orbit because then all the orbits would cross each other at one spot over the pole - that would make managing them all more difficult. It would also be sub-optimal, always having lots of satellites in view over the poles at all times, but less everywhere else. After all, they are launching these to provide service to the high arctic, which has a reasonable population, as well as assisting with service everywhere else - not just the single customer at the Amunds
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Probably worded a little oddly, but not at all wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
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What the word for "person who cannot understand English sentences even when they are explained at length to them" ?
"Idiot" will have to suffice.
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They orbit over the polar regions. Your misreading isn't a mistake by the author.
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So you change what the author wrote and that shows I misread it ?
That's not how it works, duh.
Yes, the satellites' orbits take them over the Earth's polar regions.
But, again, the satellites do NOT "orbit the Earth's polar regions". That is a WRONG statement.
Sheesh.
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Simple. Simply refer to flat earth theorists. They explain how satellites do this.
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It orbits North-South instead of East-West. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You can also use non-circular, eccentric orbits that take advantage of apogee dwell to maintain coverage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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One of your three replies is correct.
They are supporting research stations. (Score:3)
Very important work is done by the scientists at these stations, monitoring how climate change is affecting the world's largest ice sheets, as well as doing astronomy in a unique location.
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Or, you know, scientists send/receive videos to/from family members.
Or. A certain amount of data can now actually be transferred to colleagues much earlier/faster than before.
Or. They can finally play WoW!
Bit of an ignorant strawman comment grossly overestimating "tourists".
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Now crass, obscenely carbon-negative antarctic tourists
What this means is that the trickle of high-end Antarctic tourists get there in small diesel-powered ships. Compare this carbon footprint with that of the huge diesel-powered ships that Germany now has to use to import coal.
Finally access to Slashdot on Antarctica (Score:1)
Nobody wants to miss the latest news on Slashdot!
What other sites will they be visiting? Any suggestions?
Uplink is not so fast (Score:2, Informative)
Starlink uplink speeds are in the 5-10 Mbit/sec range and decreasing:
https://www.ookla.com/articles... [ookla.com]
So this is great for slashdotting in Antarctica, but two way data is not nearly as good as links to fixed satellites - which includes videoconference, uploading science data, etc.
Re:Uplink is not so fast (Score:5, Informative)
Starlink uplink speeds are in the 5-10 Mbit/sec range and decreasing:
So this is great for slashdotting in Antarctica, but two way data is not nearly as good as links to fixed satellites - which includes videoconference, uploading science data, etc.
Uh, you didn't actually read that article, did you? The upload speed of Starlink is superior to Viasat in literally every market. That article literally says the opposite of what you just said. Nice work there, sport.
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You sure as fuck didn't see the first graphic in the link which clearly shows OP's point, did you?
Shut the fuck up, Donny, you're out of your element. You don't know how to read a fucking graph (not "graphic", learn English noob. The first graphic in the article is the OOKLA logo.) First, start at the beginning, which is the chart title. It is Satellite Performance vs. Fixed Broadband Internet in North America. The chart shows that Starlink provides less upstream not than any other satellite provider, but less than "All Providers Combined", whatever the fuck that means (is it a sum, which is what combin
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OP said "Starlink uplink speeds are in the 5-10 Mbit/sec range and decreasing" and that graphic (it's a fucking plot if you want to get pedantic,) at the top demonstrates that.
Then Op said "So this is great for slashdotting in Antarctica, but two way data is not nearly as good as links to fixed satellites - which includes videoconference, uploading science data, etc."
You come in and demonstrate that you don't know shit. I used a satellite connection with 25mbit uploads in Tyler, Texas, back in 2014. Guess h
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Look kid, the claim was that Starlink was slower than other available consumer satellite internet options, and the article says the exact opposite of that. If you disagree with the article, that's great, but it doesn't say what you want it to say.
Re:Uplink is not so fast (Score:5, Funny)
Uh, you didn't actually read that article, did you? The upload speed of Starlink is superior to Viasat in literally every market. That article literally says the opposite of what you just said.
To be fair, you cheated by actually reading the article. ;)
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I also cheated by knowing what I was talking about; I've had Exede (Viasat) before. It is frankly terrible. Real-world RTT of 750-1000ms. And loads of outages. I get that space weather is a thing but it's still painful. I bet that's better with LEO, too. I've also had point to point service from three different WISPs to compare that to. The first one was literally using 802.11b. Even it kicked Exede's ass in every way.
Some people just don't appreciate the massive difference in distance between LEO and GEO,
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> but two way data is not nearly as good as links to fixed satellites - which includes videoconference, uploading science data, etc.
They appear to be tragically oversubscribed and not meeting promises (while raising prices?) but geosync isn't better for videoconference - latency sucks. 2.4Mbps is plenty for a normal video call.
Hopefully they can segregate their traffic so jobs that aren't latency sensitive take their existing route. Uncongested is best of all.
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They are oversubscribed, and knew they would be. They have more launches planned, and presumably their future satellites will each also have more capacity. One question of course will be whether they will get out ahead of this problem again, and the answer is probably not, but who knows? Another question is how much worse it will get, which I think is the really important one. Right now they are still faster (upstream, too) than the competition. Not just that, but they have usable latency. I've been on Exed
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I'm curious about the claims of over-subscription. There are people on reddit complaining about how long they've had to wait while their buddy in the next town got theirs yesterday. There's no guarantee that an order will be fulfilled straight away - you might have to wait until more satellites go up. e.g. southern and eastern Australia have been online for a few months, it was only in the last week that service to the north-west started opening up.
I've had mine for a few months now - I'm semi-rural, so not
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The best I ever got on ADSL was 8Mbps down, and 850Kbps up - yes, less than 1Mb up.
So where are the over-subscription claims coming from?
Why do you think your DSL is relevant?
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Perhaps not relevant to the claims of SL over-subscription, but it helps to paint a picture of what service I've received in the past.
If you're more interested in the current competition, it's geo-synch satellite, with 25Mbps down (I forget the up speed), latency on the order of 600-800ms, and monthly data caps in the 10-20GB range, for a monthly price about 60-70% of Starlink.
Vs. Starlink at 150/25 and no data caps. In the 6 or so months I've had it, I've not seen slowdowns other than in bad weather - a si
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Just measured mine - raw speed at the router is 139 down, 25 up. Ping 56.5ms, and jitter 7.4ms
But it does vary over the day.
And I've never seen residential geo-synch satellites show better than about 8 or 9 Mbps up. And latency less than 500ms is something fixed satellites can never reach.
Porn on the South Pole! (Score:1)
Finally!
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Looked for this comment! Yes!
if this was a movie (Score:2)
if this was a movie, each satellite would have a laser in them and Musk would be blackmailing countries and cities into paying or else. or
He would take over space travel and if countries don't pay him, he will crash a satellite into another satellite or spacecraft to stop them.
Too bad Clive Cussler is not around anymore or there could be a Dirk Pitt conspiracy novel.
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And Pitt woulld just happen to have a decommissioned space shuttle in his hangar, only in need of a flight computer and fuel.
Pitt flies to Antarctica where he has a friend who just happens to have a flight computer on ice (ha, ha), but first he has to solve the murder of another researcher (murdered by a mysterious laser from the sky), and he has to use Starlink to gather the evidence, so his friend sets him up with an encrypted VPN to keep it all secret.
It ends with another friend of Pitt's at NASA surrept
The real reason for laser links. (Score:2)
Being able to service Antarctica is cool and all, but the real reason why this technology was developed is for providing service on airplanes. How much would you pay for internet when stuck on a 12 hour flight? Starlink is guessing a fair bit.
There are other possible markets where this sort of product will make sense. For example, journalists streaming data from unfriendly countries. Or perhaps that boat dweller that wants to sail around the world when still working remotely. Overall very cool - but