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SpaceX today said its planned constellation of 4,425 broadband satellites will launch from the Falcon 9 rocket beginning in 2019 and continue launching in phases until reaching full capacity in 2024.
SpaceX gave the Senate Commerce Committee an update on its satellite plans during a broadband infrastructure hearing this morning via testimony by VP of satellite government affairs Patricia Cooper. Satellite Internet access traditionally suffers from high latency, relatively slow speeds, and strict data caps. But as we reported in November, SpaceX says it intends to solve these problems with custom-designed satellites launched into low-Earth orbits.
SpaceX mentioned 2019 as a possible launch date in an application filed with the Federal Communications Commission in November and offered a more specific launch timeline today.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by richtopia on Friday May 05 2017, @06:24PM (5 children)
After using DirectTV years ago my first thought was bullshit on those latency claims. But this really is LEO, so the distances are much much smaller than traditional communications in geosync orbit.
Some details on other networks in the same space:
http://www.satsig.net/latency.htm [satsig.net]
Discussion on satellite communication latency:
http://www.satellitetoday.com/telecom/2009/09/01/minimizing-latency-in-satellite-networks/ [satellitetoday.com]
I'm really curious as to the coverage areas. They propose a lot of satellites, but I don't have any estimate if that can cover the USA or worldwide. I'm also curious about bandwidth considerations, although with that many satellites they probably can dream up a sophisticated load balancing mechanism to get around bottlenecks.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 05 2017, @06:42PM (3 children)
I haven't read up on this... how are consumer devices (desktops, laptops, smartphones) expected to communicate with the satellites?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @06:54PM
This information may be out of date, but the last I read consumers would be using "pizza box sized" satellite terminals that work anywhere with line of sight to the sky. So #1.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday May 05 2017, @11:51PM (1 child)
With DirectTV you could either do an asymmetric connection (phone for upload, satellite for download), or satellite bidirectionally. This was over ten years ago, the receiver looked identical to satellite TV.
However, you probably should draw a more direct comparison to Iridium phones, as their satellites operate in polar orbit at 780km. The lower orbit does not necessarily mean shorter distance, as their constellation only has 66 satellites currently. Their handsets have a large (~10cm) antenna.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_Communications [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:41AM
If the Iridium system is anything to go by, the latency is between 980 - 1400 ms for an orbit that is lower than the SpaceX project. So they must have another approach. The hard latency limit is 17 ms regardless (one way up, another down and then the same way back).
I'll suspect the difference being that Iridium routes packets all the way to a station in either USA or Russia. While SpaceX will have local stations like Iridium originally were designed to make use of.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 05 2017, @06:59PM
They propose a lot of satellites, but I don't have any estimate if that can cover the USA or worldwide.
SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 satellites into low-Earth orbits, with altitudes ranging from 715 miles to 823 miles. By contrast, the existing HughesNet satellite network has an altitude of 22,000 miles.
Well, as you yourself mentioned the plan is for Low Earth Orbit, so any given satellite is only going to be over the US for a short-ish period.
(ISS orbits between 205 and 270 miles, and completes just under 16 orbits per day - 92-ish minutes per orbit). [wolframalpha.com]
SpaceX's plans to be at 800-miles which yields an orbital period of 111-is minutes [wolframalpha.com].
So they will be over head briefly, probably less than 15 usable minutes on any given satellite pass.
During the rest of the time, they will be serving most of the populated areas of earth, (depending on the exact orbit inclination) and the coverage should be universally quite good except for polar regions.
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