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Starlink is a satellite constellation being constructed by American company SpaceX to provide satellite Internet access. The constellation will consist of thousands of mass-produced small satellites, working in combination with ground transceivers. SpaceX also plans to sell some of the satellites for military, scientific or exploratory purposes.
Starlink constellation, phase 1, first orbital shell: approximately 1,600 satellites at 550 km altitude
As of November 2019, SpaceX has deployed 122 satellites. They plan to
deploy 60 more per launch, at a rate of one launch every two weeks
beginning in November 2019. In total, nearly 12,000 satellites will be
deployed by the mid-2020s, with a possible later extension to 42,000.
The initial 12,000 satellites are planned to orbit in three orbital
shells: first placing approximately 1,600 in a 550-kilometer (340 mi)-altitude shell, then approximately 2,800 Ku- and Ka-band spectrum satellites at 1,150 km (710 mi) and approximately 7,500 V-band satellites at 340 km (210 mi). Commercial operation could begin in 2020.
Concerns have been raised about the long term danger of space junk resulting from placing thousands of satellites in orbits above 1000 km and a possible impact on astronomy.
The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build and
deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in May 2018 to be about
US$10 billion. Product development began in 2015, with the first two prototype test-flight
satellites launched in February 2018. A second set of test satellites
and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation occurred
on 24 May 2019 (UTC) when the first 60 operational satellites were launched. The SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond, Washington, houses the Starlink research, development, manufacturing and on-orbit control operations.
History
2015–2017
The communication satellite network SpaceX envisions was publicly announced in January 2015, with the projected design capability to support sufficient bandwidth to carry up to 50% of all backhaul communications traffic, and up to 10% of local Internet traffic, in high-density cities. CEO Elon Musk said that there is significant unmet demand for low-cost global broadband capabilities.
SpaceX satellite development facility, Redmond, Washington, in use from 2015 to mid-2018
The opening of the SpaceX satellite development facility in Redmond
was announced by SpaceX in January 2015 with partners, to develop and
build out the new communication network. At the time, the Seattle-area
office planned to initially hire approximately 60 engineers, and
potentially 1,000 people by 2018.
The company operated in 2,800 square meters (30,000 sq ft) of leased
space by late 2016, and by January 2017 had taken on a 3,800 square
meters (40,625 sq ft) second facility, both in Redmond.
In August 2018, SpaceX consolidated all their Seattle-area operations
with a move to a larger three-building facility at Redmond Ridge
Corporate Center to support satellite manufacturing in addition to
R&D.
In July 2016, SpaceX acquired a 740 square meters (8,000 sq ft) creative space in Irvine, California (Orange County). SpaceX job listings indicated the Irvine office would include signal processing, RFIC, and ASIC development for the satellite program.
By January 2016, the company had publicly disclosed plans to have two prototype satellites flying in 2016, and have the initial satellite constellation in orbit and operational by approximately 2020.
By October 2016, SpaceX had developed the initial satellites that they
hoped to launch and test in 2017, but the satellite division was
focusing on a significant business challenge of achieving a sufficiently
low-cost design for the user equipment, aiming for something that can
ostensibly install easily at end-user premises for approximately US$200. Overall, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said then that the project remained in the "design phase as the company seeks to tackle issues related to user-terminal cost." Deployment, if carried out, would not be until "late in this decade or early in the next."
The two original test satellites were not flown, and were used only in
ground testing. The planned launch of two revised satellites was moved
to 2018.
In November 2016, SpaceX filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a "non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite system in the Fixed-Satellite Service using the Ku and Ka frequency bands."
By March 2017, SpaceX filed plans with the FCC to field a second orbital shell of more than 7500 "V-band
satellites in non-geosynchronous orbits to provide communications
services" in an electromagnetic spectrum that has not previously been
heavily employed for commercial communications services. Called the
"Very-Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) constellation," it would consist of 7,518 satellites and would orbit at just 340 kilometres (210 mi) altitude, while the smaller originally-planned group of 4,425 satellites would operate in the Ka- and Ku-bands and orbit at 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) altitude. SpaceX's plans were unusual in two areas: the company intended to use the little-used V band of the communications spectrum, and also intended to operationally use a new orbital regime, the very-low Earth orbit regime of ~340 km altitude, where atmospheric drag is quite high – normally resulting in short orbital lifetimes.
SpaceX has not made public the specific spaceflight technology they
intend to use to deal with the high-drag environment of VLEO. The March
2017 plan called for SpaceX to launch test satellites of the initial Ka/Ku
type in both 2017 and 2018, and begin launching the operational
constellation in 2019. Full build-out of the ~1200 km constellation of
~4,440 satellites was not then expected to be completed until 2024.
Some controversy arose in 2015–2017 with regulatory authorities on licensing of the communications spectrum
for these large constellations of satellites. The traditional and
historical regulatory rule for licensing spectrum has been that
satellite operators could "launch a single spacecraft to meet their
in-service deadline [from the regulator], a policy seen as allowing an
operator to block the use of valuable radio spectrum for years without
deploying its fleet."
By 2017, the FCC had set a six-year deadline to have an entire large
constellation deployed to comply with licensing terms. The international
regulator, International Telecommunication Union, proposed in mid-2017 a guideline that would be considerably less restrictive. In September 2017, both Boeing and SpaceX petitioned the US FCC for a waiver of the 6-year rule,
but that was ultimately not granted. By 2019, the FCC had set the rule
to be that half of the constellation must be in orbit in six years, with
the full system in orbit by nine years from the date of the license.
SpaceX trademarked the name Starlink for their satellite broadband network in 2017; the name was inspired by the book The Fault in Our Stars.
SpaceX filed documents in late 2017 with the FCC to clarify their space debris
mitigation plan. The company will "implement an operations plan for the
orderly de-orbit of satellites nearing the end of their useful lives
(roughly five to seven years) at a rate far faster than is required
under international standards. [Satellites] will de-orbit by
propulsively moving to a disposal orbit from which they will reenter the
Earth's atmosphere within approximately one year after completion of
their mission."
In March 2018, the FCC issued SpaceX approval with some conditions.
SpaceX would need to obtain a separate approval from the ITU.
The FCC supported a NASA request to ask SpaceX to achieve an even
higher level of de-orbiting reliability than the standard that NASA had
previously used for itself: reliably deorbiting 90% of the satellites
after their missions are complete.
2018–2019
In May 2018, SpaceX expected the total cost of development and buildout of the constellation to approach US$10 billion. In mid-2018, SpaceX reorganized the satellite development division in Redmond, and fired several members of senior management.
In November 2018, SpaceX received US regulatory approval to
deploy 7,518 broadband satellites, in addition to the 4,425 approved
earlier. SpaceX's initial 4,425 satellites had been requested in the
2016 regulatory filings to orbit at altitudes of 1,110-kilometer
(690 mi) to 1,325-kilometer (823 mi), well above the International Space Station.
The new approval was for the addition of a very-low Earth orbit
non-geostationary satellite orbit constellation, consisting of 7,518
satellites operating at altitudes from 335-kilometer (208 mi) to
346-kilometer (215 mi), below the ISS. Also in November, SpaceX made new regulatory filings with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC)to request the ability to alter its previously granted license in order to operate approximately 1,600 of the 4,425 Ka-/
Ku-band satellites approved for operation at 1,150 km
(710 mi) in a "new lower shell of the constellation" at only 550 km
(340 mi) orbital altitude.
These satellites would effectively operate in a third orbital shell, a
550-kilometer (340 mi) orbit, while the higher and lower orbits at
~1,200-kilometer (750 mi) and ~340-kilometer (210 mi) would be used only
later, once a considerably larger deployment of satellites becomes
possible in the later years of the deployment process. The FCC approved
the request in April 2019, giving approval to place nearly 12,000 satellites in three orbital shells: initially approximately 1,600 in a 550-kilometer (340 mi)-altitude shell, and subsequently placing ~2800 Ku- and Ka-band spectrum satellites at 1,150 km (710 mi) and ~7500 V-band satellites at 340 km (210 mi).
With plans by several providers to build commercial
space-Internet mega-constellations of thousands of satellites increasing
likely to become a reality, the US military began to perform test
studies in 2018 to evaluate how the networks might be used. In December,
the US Air Force issued a US$28 million contract for specific test services on Starlink.
In February 2019, a sister company of SpaceX, SpaceX Services,
Inc., filed a request with the FCC to request a license for the
operation of up to 1,000,000 fixed satellite earth stations that would communicate with its non-geostationary orbit satellite (NGSO) Starlink system.
By April 2019, SpaceX was transitioning their satellite efforts from research and development
to manufacturing, with the planned first launch of a large batch of
satellites to orbit, and the clear need to achieve an average launch
rate of "44 high-performance, low-cost spacecraft built and launched
every month for the next 60 months" to get the 2,200 satellites launched
to support their FCC spectrum allocation license assignment.
SpaceX said they will meet the deadline of having half the
constellation "in orbit within six years of authorization … and the full
system in nine years."
By the end of June 2019, SpaceX had communicated with all 60
satellites but lost contact with three; the remaining 57 were working as
intended. 45 satellites had reached their final orbital altitude of
550 km (340 mi), five were still raising their orbits, and another five
were undergoing systems checks before they raise their orbits. The
remaining two satellites were intended to be quickly removed from orbit
and reenter
the atmosphere in order to test the satellite de-orbiting process; the
three that lost contact were also expected to reenter, but will do so
passively from atmospheric drag as SpaceX was no longer able to actively control them.
In June 2019, SpaceX applied to the FCC for a license to test up
to 270 ground terminals—70 nationwide across the United States and 200
in Washington state at SpaceX employee homes—and aircraft-borne antenna operation from four distributed US airfields; as well as five ground-to-ground test locations.
By September 2019, SpaceX had gone back to the FCC to apply for
more changes to the orbital constellation. SpaceX asked to triple the
number of orbital planes in the 550 km orbital shell, from 24 to 72,
arguing that they could then place satellites into multiple planes from a
single launch, and provide service earlier to more areas.
| Phase | Orbit shells (km) | Number of satellites | Inclination
(degrees)
|
Half size contractual completion time | Full size contractual completion time | Current completion (11 November 2019) | Satellites actively
preparing to de-orbit
(11 November 2019) |
Dead
Satellites
(11 November 2019) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 550 | 1,584 | 53 | March 2024 | March 2027 | 122 | 2 | 3 | |
| 1,110 | 1,600 | 53.8 | 0 |
|
| |||
| 1,130 | 400 | 74 | 0 |
|
| |||
| 1,275 | 375 | 81 | 0 |
|
| |||
| 1,325 | 450 | 70 | 0 |
|
| |||
| 335.9 | 2,493 | 42 | November 2024 | November 2027 | 0 |
|
| |
| 340.8 | 2,478 | 48 | 0 |
|
| |||
| 345.6 | 2,547 | 53 | 0 |
|
|
Launches
.jpg)
View of the 60 Starlink satellites from the May 24, 2019 launch
The deployment of the first 1,584 satellites will be into 24 orbital planes
of 66 satellites each, with a requested lower minimum elevation angle
of beams to improve reception: 25 degrees rather than the 40 degrees of
the other two orbital shells.
SpaceX launched the first 60 satellites of the constellation in May
2019 into a 450 km orbit and expected up to six launches in 2019 at that
time, with 720 satellites (12*60) for continuous coverage in 2020.
In August 2019 SpaceX expected 4 more launches in 2019 and at least 9 launches in 2020.
Starlink satellites are also planned to launch on Starship, an under-development rocket of SpaceX that will launch 400 satellites at a time.
| Flight № | Mission | Date and time (UTC) | Launch site | Launch vehicle | Orbit altitude (km) | Inclination | Number deployed | Version | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tintin | 22 February 2018 14:17 | Vandenberg | F9 FT B1038.2 | 514 | 97.5° | 2 | – | Success |
| Two test satellites known as Tintin A and B (MicroSat-2a and 2b) that were deployed as co-payloads to the Paz satellite. | |||||||||
| 2 | Starlink 0 | 24 May 2019 02:30 | CCAFS SLC-40 | F9 B5 B1049.3 | 440 to 550 | 53° | 60 | v0.9 | Success |
| Second launch of test satellites for SpaceX's Starlink constellation. Said to be "production design", these are used to test various aspects of the network, including deorbiting. They do not yet have the planned satellite interlink capabilities and they only communicate with antennas on Earth. A day after launch an amateur astronomer in the Netherlands was one of the first to publish a video showing the satellites flying across the sky as a "train" of bright lights. By five weeks post launch, 57 of the 60 satellites were "healthy" while 3 had become non-operational and were derelict, but will deorbit due to atmospheric drag. As of 31 October 2019, 49 satellites were in the target 550 km orbit while the others either didn't reach it or were out of it. | |||||||||
| 3 | Starlink 1 | 11 November 2019 | CCAFS SLC-40 | F9 B5 B1048.4 | 550 (target) | 53˚ | 60 | v1.0 | Success |
| A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the second batch of 60 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, a mission designated Starlink 1. | |||||||||
| 4 | Starlink 2 | November 2019 | CCAFS SLC-40 | F9 B5 |
|
|
60 |
|
Planned |
| A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to launch the third batch of approximately 60 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, a mission designated Starlink 2. | |||||||||
| 5 | Starlink 3 | December 2019 | CCAFS SLC-40 | F9 B5 |
|
|
60 |
|
Planned |
| A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to launch the fourth batch of approximately 60 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, a mission designated Starlink 3. | |||||||||
Services
Global broadband Internet
SpaceX intends to provide broadband internet connectivity to underserved
areas of the planet, as well as provide competitively-priced service to
urban areas. The company has stated that the positive cashflow from
selling satellite internet services would be necessary to fund their Mars plans.
In early 2015, two space entrepreneurs announced Internet satellite ventures in the same week. In addition to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announcing the project that would later be named Starlink, serial-entrepreneur Richard Branson announced an investment in OneWeb,
a similar constellation with approximately 700 planned satellites that
had already procured communication frequency licenses for their
broadcast spectrum.
After the failures of previous satellite-to-consumer space
ventures, satellite industry consultant Roger Rusch said in 2015 "It's
highly unlikely that you can make a successful business out of this."
Musk publicly acknowledged that business reality, and indicated in
mid-2015 that while endeavoring to develop this technically-complicated
space-based communication system he wanted to avoid overextending the
company, and stated that they are being measured in their pace of
development.
Nevertheless, internal documents leaked in February 2017 indicated that
SpaceX expected more than US$30 billion in revenue by 2025 from its
satellite constellation, while revenues from its launch business were
expected to reach US$5 billion in the same year.
In February 2015, financial analysts questioned established geosynchronous orbit communications satellite fleet operators as to how they intend to respond to the competitive threat of SpaceX and OneWeb LEO communication satellites. In October, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell
indicated that while development continues, the business case for the
long-term rollout of an operational satellite network was still in an
early phase.
In 2015, court documents indicate that SpaceX had engaged in collaboration with wireless chip-maker Broadcom.
Five key engineers subsequently left to join SpaceX, leading to a
lawsuit filed by Broadcom alleging that "SpaceX stole our best minds."
In March, an Orange County judge denied Broadcom's multiple restraining
order requests.
With the initial launch of the first 60 satellites of the
operational constellation in 2019, SpaceX indicated that it would
require 420 satellites in the constellation to achieve minor broadband
coverage of Earth, and 780 of the first ~1600 to provide moderate
coverage.
Use beyond Earth
In the long term, SpaceX intends to develop and deploy a version of the satellite communication system to serve Mars.
Satellite hardware
The Internet communication satellites were expected to be in the smallsat-class of 100-to-500 kg (220-to-1,100 lb)-mass, and were intended to be in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at an altitude
of approximately 1,100 kilometers (680 mi), according to early public
releases of information in 2015. In the event, the first large
deployment of 60 satellites in May 2019 were 227 kilograms (500 lb) and SpaceX decided to place the satellites at a relatively low 550 kilometers (340 mi), due to concerns about the space environment. Initial plans as of January 2015 were for the constellation to be made up of approximately 4,000 cross-linked satellites, more than twice as many operational satellites as were in orbit in January 2015.
The satellites will employ optical inter-satellite links and phased array beam-forming and digital processing technologies in the Ku and Ka bands, according to documents filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
While specifics of the phased array technologies have been disclosed as
part of the frequency application, SpaceX enforced confidentiality
regarding details of the optical inter-satellite links.
Early satellites are launched without laser links, in October 2019
SpaceX expected satellites with these links to be ready by the end of
2020.
The satellites will be mass-produced,
at a much lower cost per unit of capability than existing satellites.
Musk said, "We’re going to try and do for satellites what we’ve done for
rockets." "In order to revolutionize space, we have to address both satellites and rockets." "Smaller satellites are crucial to lowering the cost of space-based Internet and communications."
In February 2015, SpaceX asked the FCC to consider future innovative uses of the Ka band spectrum before the FCC commits to 5G communications regulations that would create barriers to entry, since SpaceX is a new entrant to the satellite communications
market. The SpaceX non-geostationary orbit communications satellite
constellation will operate in the high-frequency bands above 24 GHz,
"where steerable earth station transmit antennas would have a wider
geographic impact, and significantly lower satellite altitudes magnify
the impact of aggregate interference from terrestrial transmissions."
The system will not compete with the Iridium satellite constellation,
which is designed to link directly to handsets. Instead, it will be
linked to flat user terminals the size of a pizza box, which will have phased array antennas and track the satellites. The terminals can be mounted anywhere, as long as they can see the sky.
Internet traffic via a geostationary satellite has a minimum theoretical round-trip latency
of at least 477 ms (between user and ground gateway), but in practice,
current satellites have latencies of 600 ms or more. Starlink satellites
would orbit at 1⁄30 to 1⁄105
of the height of geostationary orbits, and thus offer more practical
Earth-to-sat latencies of around 25 to 35 ms, comparable to existing
cable and fiber networks.
The system will use a peer-to-peer protocol claimed to be "simpler than IPv6", it will also incorporate end-to-end encryption natively. However, no details on this have been released as of yet.
Starlink satellites use Hall-effect thrusters with krypton gas as the reaction mass for orbit raising and station keeping. Krypton Hall thrusters tend to exhibit significantly higher erosion of the flow channel compared to a similar electric propulsion system operated with xenon, but at a lower propellant cost.
Satellite revisions
At the time of the June 2015 announcement, SpaceX had stated plans to launch the first two demonstration satellites in 2016, but the target date was subsequently moved out to 2018. SpaceX began flight testing their satellite technologies in 2018 with the launch of two test satellites. The two identical satellites were called MicroSat-2a and MicroSat-2b during development but were renamed Tintin A and Tintin B upon orbital deployment in February 2018. Two previously manufactured satellites, MicroSat-1a and MicroSat-1b were meant to be launched together as secondary payloads on one of the Iridium-NEXT flights, but they were instead used for ground-based tests.
MicroSat 1a & 1b were originally slated to be launched into
625 km circular orbits at approximately 86.4 degrees inclination, and to
include panchromatic video imager cameras to film images of Earth and
the satellite.
Tintin A and B were inserted into a 514 km orbit. Per FCC filings
they were intended to raise themselves to an 1125 km orbit, the
operational altitude for Starlink LEO satellites per the earliest
regulatory filings, but stayed close to their original orbits. SpaceX
announced in November 2018 that they would like to operate an initial
shell of about 1,600 satellites in the constellation at about 550 km
orbital altitude, at an altitude similar to the orbits Tintin A and B
stayed in.
The satellites currently orbit in a circular low Earth orbit at about 500 kilometers (310 mi) altitude
in a high-inclination orbit for a planned six to twelve-month duration.
The satellites will communicate with three testing ground stations in Washington and California for short-term experiments of less than ten minutes duration, roughly daily.
The 60 Starlink v0.9 satellites, launched May 2019, have the following characteristics:
- Flat-panel design with multiple high-throughput antennas and a single solar array
- Mass: 227 kg (500 lb)
- Hall-effect thrusters using krypton as the reaction mass, for position adjustment on orbit, altitude maintenance and deorbit
- Star tracker navigation system for precision pointing
- Able to use Department of Defense provided debris data to autonomously avoid collision.
- Operational altitude of 550 km (340 mi)
- 95 percent of "all components of this design will quickly burn in Earth’s atmosphere at the end of each satellite’s lifecycle"
The 60 Starlink v1.0 satellites, launched November 2019, have the additional following characteristics:
- 100% of "all components of this design will quickly burn in Earth's atmosphere at the end of each satellite's lifecycle."
- Ka-band added.
- Mass: 260 kg
- Albedo reduced.
- Operational altitude of 550 km (340 mi)
Competition and market effects
In addition to the OneWeb constellation, announced nearly concurrently with the SpaceX constellation, a 2015 proposal from Samsung outlined a 4,600-satellite constellation orbiting at 1,400 kilometers (900 mi) that could provide a zettabyte per month capacity worldwide, an equivalent of 200 gigabytes per month for 5 billion users of Internet data, but by 2019, no more public information had been released about the Samsung constellation. Telesat announced a smaller 117 satellite constellation in 2015 with plans to deliver initial service in 2021. Amazon
announced a large broadband internet satellite constellation in April
2019, planning to launch 3,236 satellites in the next decade in what the
company calls "Project Kuiper", a satellite constellation that will work in concert with Amazon's previously-announced large network of 12 satellite ground station facilities (the "AWS Ground Station unit") announced in November 2018.
By October 2017, the expectation for large increases in satellite
network capacity from emerging lower-altitude broadband constellations
caused market players to cancel some planned investments in new geosynchronous orbit broadband communications satellites.
Criticism
The large number of planned satellites have been met with criticism from the astronomical community.
Astronomers claim that the number of visible satellites will outnumber
visible stars, and that their brightness in both optical and radio
wavelengths will severely impact scientific observations. Because the
Starlink satellites can autonomously change their orbits, observations
cannot be scheduled to avoid them. The International Astronomical Union and National Radio Astronomy Observatory have released official statements expressing concern on the matter.
SpaceX representatives and Musk have claimed that the satellites will have minimal impact.
Many professional astronomers have disputed these claims based on
initial observation of the Starlink v0.9 satellites on the first launch,
shortly after their deployment from the launch vehicle. In later statements on Twitter, Musk stated that SpaceX will work on reducing the albedo of the satellites and will provide on-demand orientation adjustments for astronomical experiments, if necessary.
Concerns have been raised about the long term danger of space junk resulting from placing thousands of satellites in orbits above 1,000 km, where orbital decay takes several thousand years. Professional astronomers have raised concerns with the impact of so many transmitting satellites on both optical and radio astronomy.
