Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 508 posts

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#311

Post by rklaehn »

leoh wrote: post #192
Armisael16 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. None are space junk and none were made nonfunctional by the storm. 1. The storm caused the atmosphere to expand 2. which increases drag on satellites. 3. The satellites were in safe mode because of the storm, so… 4. some satellites fell out of orbit because they couldn’t produce enough thrust to recover after the storm No satellite was ever even at risk of becoming space junk. This is pretty read TFA stuff.

Is there any way they are being held accountable/is there open data to support assertions of the article in question?

The orbital data of all satellites is publicly available. It is calculated by the US space force (formerly US air force) spacetrack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Surveillan... .

You can get the data via several public websites. Here for example are the current orbital elements of all starlink sats in JSON format:

https://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/gp.php?GROUP=starlink&F...

This is raw data. If you want somebody that processes this data into easily digestable graphs, that also exists.

Follow Jonathan McDowell ( @planet4589 ) on twitter, or read one of these Nasaspaceflight threads:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49936.200 https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50307.0

It is not even that hard to display it yourself. Propagation libraries for most major language exist. Here is a display of all active sats, using wasm and rust that I did as a toy: https://rklaehn.ddns.net/allsats/

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#312

Post by verytrivial »

skohan wrote: post #299
root_axis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm being pedantic, but as a percentage of a whole, isn't 2% not a rounding error by definition?

This level of pedantry is one of the things I appreciate about HN

HN"."

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#313

Post by dotancohen »

Shank wrote: post #151
wilg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does SpaceX not review the data / warnings before launch?" is peak Hacker News pettiness. Try not to assume the worst, especially when it's pretty silly.

> Try not to assume the worst, especially when it's pretty silly. I'm just asking questions -- I would be genuinely curious if SpaceX has a system for determining and evaluating risk when it comes to a situation like this. It does seem absurd that they wouldn't review the active warnings prior to launches. What is indisputable here is that they've announced the loss of 40 satellites during an active warning. I think…

  > I think it's valid to wonder what the criteria is for a launch.
SpaceX operates on the very edge of what is possible. It seems very likely that they saw this as an opportunity to check how viable a Starlink launch is during these conditions. And better to do it with a 40-sat launch on Falcon than on a 300-sat launch on Starship. This storm was an opportunity to learn and to refine the launch criteria.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#314

Post by imdsm »

skywal_l wrote: post #305
coffeeblack wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The storm was the only cause, so it is in fact “of”.

The storm is a single event in a chain of events that caused the satellites to fail. It's not the direct nor the first cause.

I'd probably use the term 'following' in that case.

Starlink lost 40 satellites following geomagnetic storm

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#315

Post by blackhaz »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #152

It must be noted that the satellites were not directly damaged by the geomagnetic storm. The storm warmed the atmosphere which caused it to expand, leading to additional drag that prohibited the satellites from leaving their low "safe mode" orbit. Shortened excerpt: "These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase.... speed and severity of the storm caused…

Except for a shower of heavy metal particles. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89909-7.pdf

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#317

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

giomasce wrote: post #270
colordrops wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual consumers aren't the only customers of Starlink. It also will bring high-bandwidth low-latency connectivity to the entire globe once enough laser-linked satellites are up. Industry and militaries will be using it. Whether this is a net positive for the environment or otherwise remains to be seen. Also, the point of Starlink is to fund SpaceX's goal of a methane rocket. Methane was chosen because it can be…

If you can extract methane from the atmosphere at scale you don't need rockets to solve the carbon problem.

The idea would be to synthesize methane from the CO2 in the atmosphere of Mars, which isn't quite as hard as on Earth: CO2 falls as snow near the poles there.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#318

Post by jcun4128 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #152

It must be noted that the satellites were not directly damaged by the geomagnetic storm. The storm warmed the atmosphere which caused it to expand, leading to additional drag that prohibited the satellites from leaving their low "safe mode" orbit. Shortened excerpt: "These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase.... speed and severity of the storm caused…

I guess their hall-effect thrusters didn't have enough impulse to help or long enough fuel?

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#319

Post by theshrike79 »

Aloha wrote: post #269
KennyBlanken wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." To provide internet service to ~250,000 people - about one quarter the population of a major east coast city. Also, these are consumable - much more so than cable plants. Starlink is horrifically bad for the environment compared to ground-based infrastructure. As witnessed by the very high cost of St…

I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog. It does however possess two chief advantages - the appearance of being novel and speed of construction. To build a cellular network to cover the areas that starlink does would take a decade - where it can be done at all. The aforementioned novel appearance also gets it largely free spectr…

> I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog.

Starlink is a miracle for people with shitty or no cellular infrastructure. There are places in Australia that have exactly one cell tower for signal and they get 3G speeds at best. And if that tower has a fault, they'll be out of access for days or weeks.

$99 per month for Starlink is a no-brainer.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#320

Post by dgellow »

johnwalkr wrote: post #230
wilg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does SpaceX not review the data / warnings before launch?" is peak Hacker News pettiness. Try not to assume the worst, especially when it's pretty silly.

I have a big collection of “why don’t they just” comments from HN. It’s pretty amusing to look at them in aggregate.

Would you mind sharing it?
Post reply on HN