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SpaceX's first batch of operational Starlink satellites will launch no earlier than May 2019:
SpaceX has announced a launch target of May 2019 for the first batch of operational Starlink satellites in a sign that the proposed internet satellite constellation has reached a major milestone, effectively transitioning from pure research and development to serious manufacturing.
R&D will continue as SpaceX Starlink engineers work to implement the true final design of the first several hundred or thousand spacecraft, but a significant amount of the team's work will now be centered on producing as many Starlink satellites as possible, as quickly as possible. With anywhere from 4400 to nearly 12,000 satellites needed to complete the three major proposed phases of Starlink, SpaceX will have to build and launch more than 2200 satellites in the next five years, averaging 44 high-performance, low-cost spacecraft built and launched every month for the next 60 months.
[...] According to SpaceX filings with the FCC, the first group of operational satellites – potentially anywhere from 75 to 1000 or more – will rely on just one band ("Ku") for communications instead of the nominal two ("Ku" and "Ka"), a change that SpaceX says will significantly simplify the first spacecraft. By simplifying them, SpaceX believes it can expedite Starlink's initial deployment without losing a great deal of performance or interfering with constellations from competitors like OneWeb.
Amazon's planned 3,236-satellite broadband constellation, Project Kuiper, is being developed by former SpaceX employees:
Amazon's satellite internet plan is increasingly looking like the one Elon Musk has at SpaceX, with thousands of spacecraft that are compact in size. Among the reasons for the similarities, people tell CNBC, is that Jeff Bezos has hired some of Musk's previous senior management.
Former SpaceX vice president of satellites Rajeev Badyal and a couple members of his team are now leading Amazon's Project Kuiper, people familiar with the situation told CNBC.
[...] Badyal previously ran the "Starlink" division at SpaceX, which launched its first two test satellites last year. [...] Musk fired Badyal in June, one of the people said, confirming reports last year that the SpaceX CEO had become frustrated with the pace of Starlink's development. That was about four months after the launch of the first two Starlink test satellites. According to FCC documents, Starlink will become operational once at least 800 satellites are deployed.
Previously: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Fired Managers and Employees in June to Shake Up Starlink Project
SpaceX Seeks Approval for 1 Million Starlink Ground Stations, Faces Pentagon Audit
SpaceX and OneWeb Clash Over Proposed Satellite Constellation Orbits
Related: Relativity Space Selected to Launch Satellites for Telesat
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @09:46PM (1 child)
As soon as the Californian wingnuts realize that Musk and Bezos are planning on beaming cancer-causing wifi from satellites, it's game over.
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Wednesday April 10 2019, @01:30AM
California can't ban satellites.
Are tinfoil hats known by the State of California to cause cancer?
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(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday April 10 2019, @02:07AM (4 children)
With that many sats up there, it'll be like navigating peak hour traffic for future rocket launches. But I don't know the details.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday April 10 2019, @02:29AM
Or not.
There are about a billion cars roaming the surface area of the planet. Low-Earth orbit is a three-dimensional volume with larger than the surface of the Earth at any given altitude, and the satellites are at multiple orbits.
10,000 to 20,000 sats is nothing, and all of it is tracked. 1 billion pieces of space debris (smashed sats) could be a problem, except that all of the sats in SpaceX's constellation are designed to deorbit and burn after 7 years or so. Amazon's sats will also be required to do so.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by tibman on Wednesday April 10 2019, @04:18AM (2 children)
It sounds crowded but imagine if the entire surface of the earth was a road and there was only 20,000 cars on the entire planet. Would you ever even see another car? Now make the radius of the sphere even bigger and change the size of the cars down to a toaster.
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(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday April 10 2019, @05:24AM
To add some numbers:
Radius of Earth = 6371 km
Surface area of Earth (land, water, everything) = 510 million km2
LEOR+340 = 6711 km
Surface area = 566 million km2
That's the approx. lowest orbit for Starlink, with up to 7,518 satellites.
LEOR+550 = 6921 km
Surface area = 602 million km2
This is a newer Starlink orbit, about 1,500 satellites.
LEOR+1200 = 7571 km
Surface area = 720 million km2
Highest orbit, about 2,900 satellites (previously 4,425).
SpaceX will need to replenish these satellites in initial decades (later they could seek approval to keep them up longer and even use air-breathing ion propulsion). Maybe they will add more to the total number of satellites in order to improve service reliability, if Starlink proves to be a huge revenue stream.
Amazon has its few thousand. Other constellations will probably be on the small side since no company will be able to launch as cheaply as SpaceX can (combined with SpaceX launching at cost). Other countries will launch their own, e.g. China will have its own constellation with surveillance baked in, while not allowing ground stations for SpaceX, Amazon, Telesat, etc. to operate.
Put it all together, and what do you get? Probably less than 100,000, definitely less than 1 million. But that's just LEO internet broadband satellites. You'll also see increased numbers of smallsats and cubesats as small launchers and Starship take off. So... increase by an order of magnitude. You're still at 10 million, tops. Dwarfed by the billion cars on the ground, and all satellites will be closely tracked.
SpaceX's satellites will be bigger than a toaster [skyrocket.de], but still not significantly large (not like having thousands of Stanford tori in orbit).
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 10 2019, @07:21PM
Only the satellites are 1000 times faster than cars and and their great circles necessarily cross if the constellation covers a wide area. Add a pinch of non-spec behavior, and satellites in well-designed safe orbits turn into 7 km/s bumper cars.