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Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

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Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#31

Post by alex_duf »

youngtaff wrote: post #27
usrusr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Launch way more, and I'd imagine the sweet spot for the amount of fuel each satellite gets to shift up considerably: with a launch the size of starship they can saturate the orbits reasonably reachable from that launch for decades (spares remain in higher orbits with less drag I think) and giving one satellite more fuel is cheaper than deploying two satellites with less fuel each. And achieve far more than twice the…

Until all those sats re-enter, burn up and pollute the upper atmosphere

Wasn't there debate around their aluminium frame reacting with the upper atmosphere? The ozone layer maybe?

4 or 5 years of lifetime for literal tons of satellites is definitely not sustainable

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#32

Post by chrismorgan »

eunos wrote: post #21

Speaking of Starlink, what piqued my interest is that Huawei Mate 60 incorporated satellite call module without being bulky. It is not yet able to do data transfer but in case they can, isnt that practically a portable starlink equivalent?

Starlink is low earth orbit, around 550km up, adding best-case latency of under 4ms (550km*2/c ≈ 3.67ms). That allows an excellent service.

Satellite phones (and I’ve confirmed this applies to the Huawei Mate 60) connect with satellites in geostationary orbits, meaning an altitude of about 35,786km, adding latency of around 240ms (35786km*2/c ≈ 238.74ms). This can be acceptable for some purposes, but harms things far more than you might imagine. (Source: personal experience with the Australian NBN SkyMesh or whatever it was called before NBN took it over, only once, about five years back. Look, a lot of the internet is located in the USA, and many things perform vastly worse from Australia than from the USA, e.g. several second page loads instead of under one second, and this satellite connection was basically that but even for stuff in Australia, and several times as bad for stuff in America.)

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#33

Post by bagels »

vasco wrote: post #4
bagels wrote: post #2

Is this intentional? Is it just happening for newly launched satellites?

If you read the article you can answer both of your questions. The Sun has no intentions, and solar flares don't choose cohorts of satellites.

The article doesn't say when the satellites that are being lost were launched.

They could be bringing down the earlier versions of satellites intentionally to replace them with new ones.

Yes, the Sun doesn't care when the satellite was launched, but the current orbit of the satellite and drag profile will decide which ones come back down, if not also applied thrust.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#34

Post by sjducb »

youngtaff wrote: post #27
usrusr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Launch way more, and I'd imagine the sweet spot for the amount of fuel each satellite gets to shift up considerably: with a launch the size of starship they can saturate the orbits reasonably reachable from that launch for decades (spares remain in higher orbits with less drag I think) and giving one satellite more fuel is cheaper than deploying two satellites with less fuel each. And achieve far more than twice the…

Until all those sats re-enter, burn up and pollute the upper atmosphere

5200 tonnes of micrometeorites hit the earth each year. Star link isn’t going to make a difference.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-study-s...

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#35

Post by bagels »

yread wrote: post #20
Rebelgecko wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno if it's what happened in this case, but solar flares make the atmosphere bigger* which increases drag on satellites in low Earth orbit. That said, the satellites have an expected life of 5 years so it's not necessarily a big deal. Their planned constellation is so large that it's dependent on having a nearly continuous churn of replacement satellites. * This is a bit of an oversimplification

The atmosphere becomes less geoid-shaped during flares, right?

Day night cycles already do that. The atmosphere expands during solar storms, increasing drag.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#36

Post by bagels »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #25
complex_exp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do solar flares burn satellites? I thought they just mess up the ionosphere and inhibit communication.

Solar radiation pressure is a non-negligible perturbation to an orbit, especially during solar weather events.

Drag is dominant where starlink is.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#37

Post by mattashii »

sjducb wrote: post #34
youngtaff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until all those sats re-enter, burn up and pollute the upper atmosphere

5200 tonnes of micrometeorites hit the earth each year. Star link isn’t going to make a difference. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/antarctic-study-s...

With 22.8 tonnes per Falcon 9 launch, and 50 of those per year? That's 1140 tonnes /year of new debris in the upper atmosphere, a 21% increase. I'd say that is quite a significant change.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#38

Post by bagels »

threatripper wrote: post #22
modeless wrote: post #6

Lost 200 but launched 345, almost all of which are the latest upgraded version. The satellites are designed to last 5 years (the lifetime is limited by propellant because of atmospheric drag at their low altitude) and the first batches were launched 4 years ago now. As the constellation matures they will be de-orbiting satellites about as fast as they launch them. Seems to me like the long term viability of Starlink…

How many satellites can be launched at once? I assume that the number of satellites per orbit will be limited and changing the orbit would take extra fuel that either the launch vehicle or the satellite has to provide.

They typically launch 60 on Falcon 9, last time I checked.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#39

Post by bagels »

complex_exp wrote: post #9
vasco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the article you can answer both of your questions. The Sun has no intentions, and solar flares don't choose cohorts of satellites.

How do solar flares burn satellites? I thought they just mess up the ionosphere and inhibit communication.

Article says 'burned' but also 'burned up', which I infer to mean, burned up during reentry, though it is not precise with the langauge.

Re: Starlink quietly lost over $250M in burned satellites this summer

#40

Post by raesene9 »

threatripper wrote: post #22
modeless wrote: post #6

Lost 200 but launched 345, almost all of which are the latest upgraded version. The satellites are designed to last 5 years (the lifetime is limited by propellant because of atmospheric drag at their low altitude) and the first batches were launched 4 years ago now. As the constellation matures they will be de-orbiting satellites about as fast as they launch them. Seems to me like the long term viability of Starlink…

How many satellites can be launched at once? I assume that the number of satellites per orbit will be limited and changing the orbit would take extra fuel that either the launch vehicle or the satellite has to provide.

The article says average of 50
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