SpaceX Requests Starlink Gen2 Modification, Previews Gigabit-Speeds (satellitetoday.com) 70
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Via Satellite: SpaceX submitted a request to the FCC to modify the second generation, Gen2, of its Starlink satellite system with changes that SpaceX said will allow the constellation to deliver gigabit-speed broadband. SpaceX submitted the filing to the FCC on Oct. 11, and it was made public on Tuesday. The operator wants to make changes to the orbital configuration and operational parameters, and requests modifications for its Gen2 frequency authorization.
These modifications "will enable the Gen2 system to deliver gigabit-speed, truly low-latency broadband and ubiquitous mobile connectivity to all Americans and the billions of people globally who still lack access to adequate broadband," Jameson Dempsey, SpaceX director of Satellite Policy said in the filing. For comparison, Starlink's current statement on service speeds is that users typically experience download speeds between 25 and 220 Mbps, and a majority of users experience speeds over 100 Mbps. In 2022, the FCC partially approved SpaceX to deploy a Gen2 Starlink constellation of up to 7,500 satellites for fixed satellite services (FSS) in the Ku- and Ka-bands, then later authorized Gen2 operations using additional frequencies in the E- and V-bands. SpaceX reported that since then, it has deployed more than 3,000 satellites in the Gen2 system and the full Starlink constellation serves more than four million people.
These modifications "will enable the Gen2 system to deliver gigabit-speed, truly low-latency broadband and ubiquitous mobile connectivity to all Americans and the billions of people globally who still lack access to adequate broadband," Jameson Dempsey, SpaceX director of Satellite Policy said in the filing. For comparison, Starlink's current statement on service speeds is that users typically experience download speeds between 25 and 220 Mbps, and a majority of users experience speeds over 100 Mbps. In 2022, the FCC partially approved SpaceX to deploy a Gen2 Starlink constellation of up to 7,500 satellites for fixed satellite services (FSS) in the Ku- and Ka-bands, then later authorized Gen2 operations using additional frequencies in the E- and V-bands. SpaceX reported that since then, it has deployed more than 3,000 satellites in the Gen2 system and the full Starlink constellation serves more than four million people.
Radio brightness (Score:5, Interesting)
Starlink was gonna do something about the radio brightness of their constellation. They did: their 2nd gen fleet is 32 times brighter.
"Compared to the faintest astrophysical sources that we observe with LOFAR, UEMR from Starlink satellites is 10 million times brighter. This difference is similar to the faintest stars visible to the naked eye and the brightness of the full moon."
"Without mitigations, very soon the only constellations we will see will be human-made."
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-... [phys.org]
So, I wonder what more noise they're gonna add.
Re:Radio brightness (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Radio brightness (Score:5, Insightful)
Next, they should launch telescopes.
Once Starship is able to launch commercial payloads, it will become very cheap to put all sorts of telescopes in orbit where you no longer have to worry about atmospheric distortion and various satellites photo bombing your nighttime sky shots.
Re:Radio brightness (Score:5, Insightful)
Once Starship is able to launch commercial payloads, it will become very cheap to put all sorts of telescopes in orbit
This.
Filling the night sky with light, radio waves, etc. - it may not be pretty, but it is inevitable. The best place for astronomy is...somewhere else. Put telescopes far, far away from earth. A great spot would be the Lagrange point on the far side of the moon. That would give you a nice, big shield from all the radio and light noise from Earth. A relay station in polar lunar orbit, and the astronomers can have a field day.
All of that will be possible in just a few years. Starship is a huge game-changer.
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The best place for optical telescopes is on the dark side of the moon.
Re: Radio brightness (Score:1)
Re:Radio brightness (Score:5, Insightful)
The earth doesn't have a permanent dark side either. But if you are looking at the stars, you will get a better view when the side of the planet you are on is facing away from the sun.
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People with telescopes would really not like the bright side of the moon, because it's brighter. It's got the Earth hanging in the sky all the time. The dark side actually gets dark.
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True. Although not in radio.
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The best place for radio telescopes is on the dark side of the moon.
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The colors are "imagined" for optical as well. Most of the stuff astronomers look at has significant red shift so the color has to be corrected to account for that, therefore those colors are imagined.
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Re: Radio brightness (Score:2)
The best place for optical telescopes is the distant edges of the solar system pointing at the sun, with a coronashade, so that the sun can act as a gigantic lens.
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Tell that to Pink Floyd
Re:Radio brightness (Score:4, Informative)
You're underextimating the huge difficulty it is in launching stuff that far. James Webb was billions overbudget and a decade late, because it isn't an easy problem to move something that far away. It's even more difficult when you remember that it's got to work without anyone touching it for 20 years. Engineering something to work reliably for 20 years with absolutely no maintenance is a very costly problem, especially mechanical objects - things like greases and such can break down over time.
The only thing Starship might do is bring down launch costs, but you're still talking about billions of dollars here. Sure, NASA and the ESA and such can cooperate to launch one telescope of that magnitude every decade, but that locks out basically everyone else on a more limited budget. Not everyone is Elon Musk who can throw tens of billions of dollars at something.
A telescope on Earth though is far cheaper to build, maintain and operate, and likely will life lifetime costs way lower than a Starship launch.
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For something like James Webb, probably. But that's because we're so used to the "we can only afford one so over-engineer it" approach.
Starship launches should be cheap. And it can put a lot of stuff in orbit. So take the starlink approach instead of the Webb approach. Every university and college - and even community college - will be able to afford to put a small telescope in orbit th
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I agree with putting telescopes in space.
The problem is the amateurs and hobbyists will get screwed. Speaking as an amateur.......
Its probably inevitable I guess.
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Like I said, Its probably inevitable.
All things change. And yeah, I rather have good internet service everywhere.
What about hobbyists? (Score:3)
From what I've read that's all going away. The night sky will be so full of starlink sats you won't be able to see much of anything.
Re: Radio brightness (Score:2)
How exactlt are you planning to move things like, just to name two, China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope or Virginia's Green Bank observatories on the moon? Put them in a big rocket?
Maybe you'll need 3000 of these and then surely Musk and his clientele will pay for that?
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The only Starlink satellites I've ever noticed in anybody's photographs are the recently-launched trains of satellites that are still maneuvering into their final orbits. SpaceX has done a good job of keeping the albedo down once they're in a stable orbit.
Re:Radio brightness (Score:4, Interesting)
My brother is a dedicated astrophotographer. A really big proportion of his pictures now have streaks. The one's we've investigated have been mostly Starlink.
Re: Radio brightness (Score:2)
That's in optical, light reflected by the sun. They dimmed that. But optical is only a minuscule part of the EM spectrum.
For reference: if optical spanned one octave (12 keys) on a piano keyboard. A piano spans 7 octaves but we're listening to about 70 octaves in astronomy.
Sattelites are inherently radio sources. And, as the article I linked to in first post points out, they leak huge amounts of EM beyond their designed transmission spectrum probably due to the onboard electronics working.
The sky isn't just
Thou shalt not speak ill of our Lord and Savior (Score:1)
I'll stop being obsessed with Leon musk (Score:1)
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What's funny is even after all these years Elon musk still pays people to make sure anyone who disagrees with him on slashdot gets modded down. I guess when you have 220 billion dollars of government money in your bank account you can do whatever you want. I'd like to have my tax dollars back though. He
can keep the $20 million dollar golden parachute PayPal gave him though I guess technica
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Re:Who will clean up? (Score:5, Informative)
All of it comes down by itself due to atmospheric drag. It's a LEO constellation. The cost of removing the orbital parts of Starlink is literally zero.
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All of it disappears by it self due to corrosion. The cost of removing the drilling rigs of the oil industry are literally zero.
We need Musk to rehabilitate the vacuum of space when he's finished with it !!
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All of it disappears by it self due to corrosion. The cost of removing the drilling rigs of the oil industry are literally zero.
When the satellites run out of fuel to boost themselves, their orbits will decay and they will reenter the atmosphere within about five years or so based on their orbits. They can also be manually deorbited before they fully run out of fuel. The above comparison is just plain stupid.
I think Elon is a huge tool, but you're barking up the wrong tree with this issue.
Re: Who will clean up? (Score:2)
The difference is that this happens in 5 years 100% reliably.
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Assuming it 100% burns up and there are no environmental effects from dumping thousands of satellitse of unknown composition into the upper atmosphere every year.
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There's nothing unknown about the composition of the satellites. Nor are they big. There are literally more cars on fire every year than the population of the Starlink satellites is projected to get (to say nothing of right now). And cars are bigger and more toxic.
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Why would the composition be unknown?
We have the plans and specs, as well as the factory that manufactures them right here on earth.
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Trade secret. SpaceX know but aren't saying.
Re:Who will clean up? (Score:4, Funny)
putting orders of magnitude more devices in orbit than before.
Don't you see? Darth Maga is building a death star up there.
Gigabit speed... (Score:5, Interesting)
... assuming you're in the middle of nowhere and not in a city with many thousands of other people buying Starlink who thought the data rates would be all for them with no contention.
Re:Gigabit speed... (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely.
Starlink isn't meant to compete with existing broadband in well-served communities. It's competitive in under-served areas. People in urban and suburban areas shouldn't bother getting it.
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Absolutely.
Starlink isn't meant to compete with existing broadband in well-served communities. It's competitive in under-served areas. People in urban and suburban areas shouldn't bother getting it.
I live in rural-ish suburbia and my only option is Comcast (need I say more). Is Starlink a viable option for me? I don't need super high bandwidth - I just need enough bandwidth and reliability to work from home. Anybody have experience with this?
Re:Gigabit speed... (Score:4)
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That said, if you are a gamer requiring ultra low latency, are in a co
Re: Gigabit speed... (Score:2)
Latency of Starlink connections tend to be lower than for ground based connections as long as the distance to the host is more than about 100m (which in practice, is pretty much always true). This is because Starlink data will generally go at the speed of light straight between satellites, and then down to a ground station very near the data, rather than travelling at the speed of a signal in copper, and via a fairly circuitous path.
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In my experience they don't oversell their bandwidth. It takes quite a while to get a Starlink receiver in an area with high demand.
Re:Gigabit speed... (Score:4, Insightful)
They won't even let people in cities buy it because they know they can't serve areas like that. It doesn't cope well with urban canyons either, it really needs a roof with a decent view of the sky. No putting it on your balcony to avoid whatever craptastic ISP is the only game in town.
It's not without its uses, and it's good that they are improving the speeds (although it's not going to be gigabit symetrical like fibre), but the stuff about "truly low latency" is just nonsense. Can't change the laws of physics. Maybe if they started putting CDNs on the satellites, but that still wouldn't help for things like gaming and teleoperation.
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There's no reason in the "laws of physics" that latency has to be bad. The satellite are at 340km. So the path from you, to the satellite back down to a ground station might be 340 * 2 * sqrt2 = 961km, or 3.2ms.
Increased use of routing on the satellites could push this 3.2ms always in a useful direction, and distant sites could be reached at a lower latency than terrestrial networks.
The big limitation in latency right now is the handling of the shared medium and the need for terminals to take turns. But
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That's the whole point.
Densely populated cities are financially viable to deploy fibre, so do that.
Sparsely populated areas in the middle of nowhere are not viable to deploy fibre, so that's why we have things like starlink.
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But keep in mind there's the middle ground of fixed wireless.
Current fixed wireless systems aren't always great, but they should offer greater spectral efficiency due to much lower path loss.
Re:FCC is biased (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are so-called Progressives against actual progress?
It's called caution. You may have heard of it, though you clearly don't know much about it. It's not a new idea, but to the people who believe in moving fast and breaking things, I'm sure it sounds weird. When your actions have the potential to affect millions or billions of others, an abundance of it should be used.
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Do we really have to wait 25 years for him to fuck off to a location that is sufficiently far away to be measured in light-minutes?
Can we speed that up, please?
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There's also another word to describe that: "Conservative"
Yes, It's too bad that conservatives aren't conservatives, and democrats aren't democratic. Uniparty fascism is destroying the world.
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Do they have the capacity? (Score:2)
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It's an Elon Musk company.
Since when do they not say unbelievable horseshit in press releases that eventually comes true, but nowhere near the time scale in the press release?
Space vandelism (Score:2)
I wonder what SpaceX will do if/when someone figures out how to target and disable its satellites. I can see some eco-warrior types trying this for a variety of reasons they justify in their heads. That will likely start the commercial space race and give Space Force something to do.