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Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

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Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That's not how any of that works.

Oh, do explain a little more about why that doesn't work; wavelengths, total power, distances, etc.

Let me enumerate the ways.

1. Starlink satellites have Ku and Ka transceivers for uplink and downlink. They simply aren't capable of talking to any Mars probes using X band radios for Earth communications which is all of the current and near future ones.

2. A phased array can use beam forming to "aim" and to use aggregate receivers for resolution but they're seeing limited. Tiny receivers on Starlink satellites (even arrayed) would be no good for Mars probes even if they covered the right bands.

3. Every element involved in the question is in motion relative to every other element. Starlink satellites have orbital periods of about 90 minutes. Each satellite would only have Mars visible for at best half its orbit. With Mars effectively a point source any Starlink satellites arrayed to receive signals from Mars would need to rotate in sync to keep Mars in view. That necessitates pointing all a satellite's other antennas away from each other and Earth since they're all bus mounted. This means they can't simultaneously do Starlink and Mars relay tasks and you'd need a lot of Starlink sats to even begin to effectively receive Mars transmissions.

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