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.
-- submitted from IRC
Related Stories
SpaceX gets U.S. regulator to back satellite internet plan
Elon Musk's SpaceX, fresh off the successful launch this month of the world's most powerful rocket, won an endorsement on Wednesday from the top U.S. communications regulator to build a broadband network using satellites.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed the approval of an application by SpaceX to provide broadband services using satellites in the United States and worldwide. "Satellite technology can help reach Americans who live in rural or hard-to-serve places where fiber optic cables and cell towers do not reach," Pai said in a statement.
SpaceX told the FCC in a Feb. 1 letter that it plans to launch a pair of experimental satellites on one of its Falcon 9 rockets. That launch, already approved by the FCC, is set for Saturday in California. The rocket will carry the PAZ satellite for Hisdesat of Madrid, Spain and multiple smaller secondary payloads.
Previously: SpaceX to Launch Broadband Satellites With Latency as Low as 25ms in 2019
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 05 2017, @05:46PM (25 children)
Is that a comms system, or a shield against alien invasion?
4425 SpaceX sats in LEO, 700 for Facebook, Google, whoever ... hollywood can forget about the male hero landing the crippled ship by hand, it's gonna a take good size computer to make a re-entry trajectory without getting hit by something, unless you can magically invoke "never tell me the odds".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @05:58PM (7 children)
4425 SpaceX sats in LEO, 700 for Facebook, Google, whoever
You mean they won't just be simple dumb pipes, bouncing the signal back to earth? Well, that figures... Yay for making the digital divide even bigger. What will this do about the censorship problem? How easy will it be for gov/corp to shut them down?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @06:30PM (6 children)
When these provides connectivity over China, Turkey and other censor loving places. There might be some conflicts of interest.
In the choice between crappy 512 kbit/s ADSL behind a wall of censorship and gigabit feed to orbit without any. Well what will people choose..
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday May 05 2017, @07:15PM
Well, I doubt these will be allowed to launch without some kind of 'kill-switch' on board.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 05 2017, @07:50PM (4 children)
I'm sure these will be linking everyone's Neuralink's together too.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 05 2017, @07:56PM (3 children)
Neuralink + satellite internet = latency dysmorphia
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @11:15PM (2 children)
Or rather billions of obedient neuroslaves. The wet dream for Global Slave Control Inc.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 05 2017, @11:26PM (1 child)
The new fashion trend: Magneto helmet but with a metallic Guy Fawkes mask as the face.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @11:59PM
This type of neuro control isn't dependent on foil surrounding your head. But rather not getting that stuff operated into your head to start with.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Friday May 05 2017, @06:26PM (2 children)
10 times that number of satellites orbiting very low would still give the appearance of empty skys for any re-entering vehicle. Earth is a big place.
There are easily 6000 commercial aircraft in the sky on any normal flight day.
This site gives you a birds eye view of the busy areas
http://www.businessinsider.com/flight-radar-planes-2015-8 [businessinsider.com] and it doesn't even cover Russia and China, and doesn't pick up small general aviation planes.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 05 2017, @10:17PM (1 child)
Commercial airplanes are pretty visible, and don't travel at over 7km/s. Every orbiting object threatens a pretty big arc, which you don't want to intersect unless you also match its speed and direction.
Space is mind-boggingly huge, but adding another 5000 things, plus launcher spare parts, up there, must change the probably of getting hit from "no worries" to "check before you cross" (still proportional to how big of a target you are). They already have to move the ISS a bit every now and then, to be safe.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday May 05 2017, @10:25PM
These things are big, and show up on radar, and traveling in predictable paths. I'm not seeing the issue here. Even the ISS only has to dodge junk once or twice a year.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @06:48PM (1 child)
Imagine we did want to make an alien invasion shield. How many turrets do you think we'd need to have to provide complete coverage? If each turret can cover a square mile of land securely, you'd need 3.8 million of them just to cover an area the size of the US. And in terms of collisions, a square mile is uncomfortably close - but not still far away from a collision. The mobile nature of things make collisions vastly more likely of course, but I'm not using this so much as an analog of the math but an analog of the scale. Like most things with big numbers we, humans that is, tend to be just awful at actually grasping how big it really is - even given the exact numbers. 4,425 more things in space is a fraction of the impact you'd get by adding 4,425 more cars on US roads.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:46AM
Imagine we did want to make an alien invasion shield. How many turrets do you think we'd need to have to provide complete coverage?
And what would you have to arm them with to be able to stop the f'Znt'rks-lTh'n Fleet when it finally arrives?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @07:01PM (6 children)
Perhaps then we just have to wait for the Kessler syndrome [wikipedia.org] to set in with a vengeance.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday May 06 2017, @12:58AM (1 child)
Even your own link dismisses the issue in LEO.
The most commonly used orbits for both manned and unmanned space vehicles are low earth orbits, which cover an altitude range low enough for residual air drag to be sufficient to help keep the zone clear. Collisions that occur in this altitude range are also less of an issue because the directions into which the fragments fly and/or their lower specific energy often result in orbits intersecting with earth or having perigee below this altitude.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:19AM
All good then ;-)
Just have to wait for a Musk offer no one can resist .. :p
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:51AM (2 children)
The Kessler Syndrome has a relatively simple solution, you just need to send a clearing ship up there to sweep up the debris. You could call it the Kessler Run, and award a prize for the ship that can cover the area in the shortest distance, say 12 parsecs.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 06 2017, @08:14AM (1 child)
How will you clear it up without resupplies of energy or materials from Earth? which makes it unfeasible.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday May 06 2017, @08:22AM
Whoosh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:18AM
Don't worry. The half section [wikipedia.org] will take care of it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 05 2017, @10:57PM (3 children)
4425 SpaceX sats in LEO, 700 for Facebook, Google, whoever ... hollywood can forget about the male hero landing the crippled ship by hand, it's gonna a take good size computer to make a re-entry trajectory without getting hit by something, unless you can magically invoke "never tell me the odds".
It's far less than one in a million. If you're in a reentry trajectory, then you're not at an altitude that intersects satellites.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday May 06 2017, @12:55AM (2 children)
Depends from where ... The original post is about Aliens and Hollywood spaceships, both of which tend to come (back) from outside of LEO, and therefore have to plan because they're not on the same type of orbital paths as our sats.
Reposting for the fun: http://stuffin.space [stuffin.space]
The odds are probably in the ballpark of the lottery, and with enough attempts, someone does occasionally win.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:33AM (1 child)
The odds are probably in the ballpark of the lottery, and with enough attempts, someone does occasionally win.
In other words, not often enough compared to other risks. The length of a reentry trajectory is typically about half the length of one low Earth orbit and doesn't traverse the zones where satellites would be.
Consider the ISS. This spacecraft already dodges somewhere around 20k pieces [wikipedia.org] of space debris large enough to severely damage or destroy the station on impact. It also orbits every 90 minutes. Since November of 2000, the ISS has been continuously inhabited. That's crudely 100k orbits without serious impact. I recall that the ISS was expected to have a significant chance of destruction due to impact over its lifespan of around three to four decades. That indicates to me a chance of impact for this pretty large object of one in 100k to one million per orbit.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:52AM
The ISS is tiny compared to what Elon's shield will defend us against [ytimg.com].
We need more Macs in orbit, though ... darn shields.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:06AM
25,000 miles in a shortest path equatorial orbit - 5 miles between satellites, but these things are going to be sweeping up and down about 90 degrees of latitude, too, so we're looking at more like 150 million square miles, or 30,000 square miles per satellite an area of ~175 miles x ~175 miles. Say this "killer satellite" is 10'x10'x10' cube (it's not, but just say), it will occupy 1.2*10-9 % of the sky at a 10' elevation.
If you just fly through at random, once a day for the next 4 billion years, you'd have about a 3% chance of ever hitting one.
Although, dwelling at that orbital altitude flying in retrograde direction would not be a smart thing to do without a complete constellation track to plan your route.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(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.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @06:40PM (2 children)
They even got a wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] since January 2015.
Seems they upset some Broadcom higher ups by "SpaceX stole our best minds." ;-)
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday May 05 2017, @08:10PM (1 child)
HohohoHawHawHAWWWWWW!
At first I thought you were joking, but it's still a good joke nonetheless, I'm still laughing heartily.
Using Broadcom engineers for space communications is like using engineers from Sun Tracker® [suntrackerboats.com] to design your new ocean-liner.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @11:19PM
I thought Broadcom was just proprietary suckers. Not that they sucked on a strictly technical competence level. But then maybe SpaceX isn't using them for critical functionality. There's a lot of tasks for a project like this anyway.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday May 05 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
Since Google Fiber is fizzling out, perhaps this will be our savior from our current crop of ISP's. Any company that allows me to tell the incumbent ISP's to piss off is going to be my hero.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Friday May 05 2017, @07:21PM
Yeah, well, unless these things are just passive repeaters, the "ISP" that operates them isn't likely to be any better. And the government will still want their kill-switch.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @07:19PM (1 child)
There are five of us in a short-range module on a four-month tour. It's very tight quarters, with carefully allotted water, food, and air.
One crew member has been gaining weight steadily. He no longer fits in his chair. We don't know where he's getting the extra food, but since there is no renewable resource here, we're suspicious that he might have rigged the food dispenser. This would mean we'll run out of food eventually. Or he has a secret supply--but where? This capsule has no real hiding places.
We have begun considering putting him out the porthole. His food behavior may cost us our lives. What do you think?
Dear How to Lose Weight While in Orbit,
There are rules in the handbook, section 127 and on, about respecting an other being's physical habits and appearances. This is at the heart of our ability to communicate with other species. If you can't interact well with your own kind, how will you manage with radically different races with different cultures and different eating habits?
This man may have developed a hormone problem; have you considered that? Have you even spoken to him about it? If he eats all your food, that's one thing--but you don't know that. If you did know that, you would be justified in throwing him out the air hole. Or, in fact, killing him and eating him. That's section 134.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @11:56PM
Section 134 is the resource optimal as any Borg would tell you ;-)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Friday May 05 2017, @11:54PM
Just some thoughts..
SpaceX rockets to get into space and to other planets, cheaply.
SolarCity panels generates power.
Tesla batteries enables power at night (type 21700 ; 56 kJ).
SpaceX-internet to provide connectivity.
See a common thread here?
Future projects launched as profit making companies?
* Oxygen generators for submarines..
* Inflatable (LED) greenhouse to get cheap and poison free food.
* Supersized 3D printer to build fast housing. (may also be used as radiation protection)
* Underground mini mole (TBM) to build cable tunnels and other underground structures autonomously.
* Advanced sensor and microtechnology to build "tricorder" like health tools for cheap and portable detection and fix services.
* Maglev accelerators to.. some earthbound application.
(Score: 1) by corey on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:12AM (4 children)
Objects in LEO don't last long due to ionospheric drag. They slowly decelerate and fall then break up. I assume spacex will top up the sattelite pool with more every now and then, then.
And secondly, why are spacex doing this? They are a space transport company, not a satellite manuf or internet provider?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday May 06 2017, @01:31AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday May 06 2017, @02:33AM (1 child)
Maybe they need an onboard nav and engine system, to correct deteriorating orbits. Except, that adds weight and complexity, which adds to cost. Apparently, they see these things as "disposable". You're right, there's a reason everyone puts everything way up high. The orbits remain stable for longer further out. There's probably a "sweet spot", where they figure they can make money while losing satellites at an acceptable rate.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday May 06 2017, @05:11AM
They're right, in context. By the time these ones fall out of the sky they will have better, more efficient ones to replace them. Spending money and lift mass to give them a longer life will reduce their operating capacity and is just a waste.
Orbits at 1000 km may technically be subject to atmospheric drag, but it will still be many decades to centuries before these things crash on their own.
The real reason satellites are placed further out is so that they are easier to track, all the way out to geostationary.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 06 2017, @08:20AM
As the previous poster quoted.. "SpaceX intends to develop and deploy a version of the satellite communication system that would be used at Mars.".
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Saturday May 06 2017, @10:33AM
In other news: Tesla Warns of Malware It Shipped on Sat Cubes
Tesla is urging customers to destroy satelites it shipped to space customers because they contain malware.