you're looking at 60 satellites hurtling
into the sky
and over the next few decades elon musk
is hoping to send 42
000 of these satellites to space 15
times the number of operational
satellites in orbit today
it's part of starlink the expansive
constellation from musk and spacex that
hopes to bring the world low latency
high-speed internet
promising no more buffering and nearly
instantaneous internet in every corner
of the world
but experts worry it may come at a hefty
cost for space exploration
nearly half of the world's population
does not have access to the internet
because most internet options require an
extensive track of costly underground
cables
leaving many rural locations offline and
while satellite internet can reach those
areas
traditional satellite internet is
provided by a bus size spacecraft
that has launched 22 236 miles
into space in orbit around earth that
distance means the satellite can reach
places that cables can't
but since that one satellite is meant to
service a lot of people
its data capability is limited which
then limits connection speeds
and that signal has to travel a long way
creating
a lot of lag this is where elon musk and
spacex come in
starlink is a globe encircling
network of internet beaming satellites
that is trying to get
you online no matter where you are in
the world and there's a rather
persuading element for spacex as well
elon musk said he's just trying to grab
a small percentage of a trillion dollar
a year telecommunications industry
around the world
if spacex can pull this off the company
could net about 30 to 50
billion dollars a year musk and spacex
president gwynne shotwell
say that much money could
single-handedly fund the development of
starlink
starship and spacex's mars launch
infrastructure
as of early october spacex has launched
more than 700 satellites into orbit
with a plan to release a total of 12 000
over the next five years
half of them by the end of 2024 and musk
wants to add another 30 000 to that
coming to a total of 42 000 satellites
circling earth
all of these satellites will also be
much closer anywhere from 200 to 400
miles above the planet in low earth
orbit
this reduces the connection delay that
is found with traditional
internet satellite once in orbit these
starling satellites will be constantly
on the move
which is why so many are necessary the
problem is
you have to have many satellites
orbiting to make up for the fact that
you can't stay in one spot above the
earth because the you
need several satellites overhead at any
one time to cover
many users every satellite will connect
with several others via laser beams
creating something like the network's
backbone and to actually bring this
internet into your home
you'll need to get a pizza sized antenna
this phased array antenna can aim its
beam at whatever satellite is overhead
which will maintain an internet signal
in your home but this scheme
isn't without problems starling
satellites are bright
they reflect the sunlight and shine it
back towards earth so they end up
looking like
bright moving stars as cool as it may
look
that comes with problems starling
satellites are most visible in the night
sky
right before dawn and right after dusk
which is the exact time that astronomers
are hunting for near-earth objects or
asteroids
objects that could hit earth and
possibly harm us and as more satellites
go up
so does the likelihood that they'll
interfere with astronomers views
if starlink continues to be a problem
for these type of sky surveys
we may not have as much notice as we
want to detect a near-earth object
and thwart it and prevent it from
hitting earth beyond detecting deadly
asteroids the wall of satellites could
also obstruct the search for new planets
or
even black holes spacex realized it had
to do something and it did
it created what's called a dark side
which is a satellite that has all of its
shiny parts
coated in a very black dark material
it also tried adding visors to shield
those shiny parts from the ground
but unless the satellites are cloaked
like a spaceship in star trek
technology that does not exist none of
this will fully solve the problem
and even if it did there is a much
bigger issue at hand
there's a concern about space debris
because when you have so many satellites
in the closest tightest densest orbits
around earth
there's a higher chance that those
satellites could collide with each other
or with other satellites those crashes
would create
clouds of debris that can orbit the
earth for years
decades or even centuries and that
debris can then disable
or cause other satellites to crash into
each other creating even more debris and
this problem spirals out of control
and in effect called the kessler
syndrome and if we reach that then
essentially space is too unsafe to
access
to be clear the risk of a runaway
kessler syndrome is very low
but the potential impacts of that are so
high that scientists are working very
hard
to control such an event from ever
happening spacex has said its satellites
can automatically move out of the way to
avoid collisions
but dozens of spacex satellites are
already disabled and can't move at all
posing a potential threat and those
concerned with spacex's plans are
lobbying the fcc to reign in the company
and more strictly regulate low earth
orbit
and that could make it more expensive
and harder to deploy the planned 42
000 satellites but it doesn't stop at
starlink
amazon's kuiper project one web china's
han jin
and other projects are looking to
challenge spacex by launching their own
global networks of hundreds or thousands
of satellites
if they all got their way with little to
no regulation we could end up with a
hundred thousand satellites encasing our
planet within the next 10 years
dramatically increasing the risk of
blocking off space
for everyone