Since the start of the space age, more than 8,800 objects have
been launched into Earth's orbit.
But in a few years, that number could increase significantly.
Private companies plan to launch tens of thousands of satellites
into space to beam internet to customers on Earth.
Elon Musk's SpaceX alone has announced plans to launch 42,000
satellites as part of its Starlink internet project.
If this happens, SpaceX will, by itself, be responsible for about
a fivefold increase in the number of spacecraft launched by all
of humanity.
Technically, a satellite refers to any object that orbits
another, larger object in space, like the Earth orbiting the sun.
But when we talk about satellites, we usually think about manmade
satellites. The first manmade satellite launched into space was
called Sputnik and it was about the size of a beach ball.
This is Russia on October 4th, 1957.
On the launching pad is Sputnik Assembly First.
Freely translated to mean 'traveling companion to the Earth.'
The Soviet Union is launching the first Earth satellite.
Sputnik signaled the beginning of the space race.
And since then, we've been launching more and more objects into
orbit. Now, companies such as SpaceX, Amazon, Telesat and OneWeb
want to launch thousands of satellites to make what they call
megaconstellations.
A megaconstellation is a network that has hundreds, or even
thousands of satellites all orbiting and working together in a
complete system. The reason these companies are pursuing these
megaconstellations comes down to essentially two factors.
One is that the cost of hardware for these types of satellites
has come down and they've shrunk in size considerably.
And the second is because there's an increasing demand for data
all around the world.
So providing high-speed data to any point on earth is an
increasingly valuable asset.
Satellites that provide internet are not necessarily a new idea.
Companies like Hughes Network Systems and ViaSat are already
beaming internet to rural parts of the planet that are not served
by fiber cable connections.
About 49 percent of global households are still not connected to
the internet. And these are the people that traditional satellite
companies have tried to reach.
Today, there are only a small number of consumer internet
offerings over satellite.
They tend to be more expensive and they also tend to have fairly
low numbers of users.
In the United States, there are only about 2 million customers
out of our more than a hundred million households that utilize
satellite internet.
One big issue with current satellite networks has been latency.
Traditional satellites orbit very far away from the Earth.
And that distance increases the overall latency in the network.
Latency is the responsiveness of the network.
So if you are streaming something online, it's how quickly
something loads or how smoothly it runs.
Most internet satellites today operate in what's called
'geostationary orbit,' which is around 36,000 kilometers above
Earth's surface and remain fixed on top of one area.
But the satellite systems that SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon and Telesat
are proposing will operate in what is called 'low Earth orbit,'
or between 180-2,000 kilometers above Earth's surface.
In theory, this should cut down on the latency issues, with
speeds up to 20 times faster than current GEO satellites.
But to get the same coverage with LEO satellites, you need more
of them. The speed of transmission of light in fiber is 40
percent slower than it is in air or vacuum.
So in fact, you can build a quite extensive low Earth orbit
satellite network and have very fast communications capability
because they're lower.
You actually need more of them to cover an effective area, right?
They just can't see all the parts of the Earth.
So our higher orbiting satellites used to be able to get away
with a much smaller number of actual orbiting vehicles, whereas
these new, lower earth orbit constellations do require more.
However, there's more to it than that.
They also need to have adequate power.
And if they're going to provide lots of people with connectivity,
they need to have lots of capacity.
Hence, you need more satellites to do that.
Whether having, you know, 10,20 thousand or more satellites
orbiting is warranted for any of these, is still yet to be seen.
Satellites still need something back on Earth to receive their
signals. Beyond building the satellites for these
megaconstellations, these companies will also have to invest in
heavy amounts of infrastructure on the ground.
That will look like thousands or even millions of antenna all
around the world to receive the signal from the satellites and
distribute it to consumers on the ground.
Plans to offer internet from space may sound familiar as both
Facebook and Google have considered developing these kinds of
satellites before.
But Facebook hasn't announced anything in over a year since
talking about its Athena satellite.
And Google is one of the main investors in SpaceX's system.
So they're expected to look very closely at how Starlink is
developed. The top companies pursuing
megaconstellations are tech giants SpaceX and Amazon, as well as
satellite builders OneWeb and Telesat.
. The leader in this category, at least by quantity of satellites
launched, is SpaceX, as they've launched 120 of their Starlink
satellites so far this year and are set to launch another 60 very
soon. And we have confirmation of deploy.
You can hear the team in the background.
This is an incredible moment for SpaceX.
You can see those flat-packed Starlink satellites slowly gliding
away from the top of the second stage.
This is the highest number of satellites that SpaceX has ever
deployed in a single time.
SpaceX's utilization of its renewable Falcon 9 rocket
dramatically decreases the cost of sending satellites into space.
FCC documents show that SpaceX expects Starlink to become
operational once at least 800 satellites are deployed.
The main value of Starlink is providing low latency,
high bandwidth access to sparse and
moderately sparse, like a relatively low density
areas. It's probably able to serve like three to five percent of
people in the world. SpaceX began with the idea to launch 12,000
satellites. But in October 2019, the company requested permission
for an additional 30,000.
SpaceX has also put in a request with the FCC for up to 1 million
Earth stations, which end-user customers will utilize to
communicate with its satellites.
The U.S. Air Force is also testing Starlink's satellites on its
military planes and has so far reported favorable results.
SpaceX has said that it will begin offering internet service by
2020. Hot on SpaceX's heels is OneWeb, which is already
building its own satellites, having launched six earlier this
year. We've done a joint venture with Airbus and we have a
factory at Cape Canaveral and we've really set up a supply chain
and we're using the same satellite over and over again to
populate our system.
And we're going to produce 650 for the first layer of capacity,
which will be for global coverage.
But we'll go all the way up to 2,000.
Like SpaceX, OneWeb has its own set of big name backers,
including Softbank and British business magnate Richard Branson.
OneWeb says each of its satellites cost about $1 billion to
produce. But unlike SpaceX, OneWeb must depend on Russian-built,
Soyuz rockets to launch its satellites.
Unlike OneWeb and SpaceX, Amazon has yet to launch any
satellites, and is early in developing, as it's still seeking
regulatory approval for its project Kuiper Network.
Amazon's Project Kuiper plans to launch a total of 3,236
satellites into low-Earth orbit.
Back in April 2019, Amazon hired the former leader of SpaceX's
satellite program to run Project Kuiper after Musk fired him.
According to reports, Musk had become frustrated with the pace of
Starlink's development.
Though it's behind on building satellites, Amazon already has a
head start on ground infrastructure.
In November 2019, the company announced AWS Ground Station, a new
business unit that will build twelve satellite facilities around
the world to provide the vital link needed to transmit data to
and from satellites in orbit.
Plus, although technically a different company, Jeff Bezos' ,
Blue Origin would be the obvious choice to launch these
satellites. Also in the mix is Canadian satellite builder
Telesat, which has received significant investment thus far but
hasn't launched any satellites yet.
They're negotiating with companies that would build their
network, which is estimated to cost about $3 billion.
Astronomers are now very concerned about this new, large
constellations that are being launched.
The number that are planned would exceed all satellites launched
to date. And the real challenge here is not necessarily the
number of new launches.
It's the brightness, how bright these things will be.
That they will saturate our detectors and cause all sorts of
difficulties in astronomical observing.
This image, taken from a telescope in Chile in November 2019,
illustrates the concerns from astronomers.
The telescope, meant to see images of distant stars and galaxies,
instead captured the light trails of 19 Starlink satellites.
Some astronomers took to Twitter to express their concerns after
SpaceX launched the first 60 Starlink satellites back in May
2019.
summarizedAfter astronomers raised these concerns, SpaceX CEO,
Elon Musk, said in a tweet that his company would look at how
they can decrease the brightness of these Starlink satellites.
SpaceX president, Gwen Shotwell, also told reporters in December
2019 that they planned to address the issue.
SpaceX will put a special coating on the bottom of one of the
satellites on its third launch to test if that will decrease the
satellite's brightness.
We have monthly telecons with SpaceX engineers to discuss these
things. The LLST project in Chile also has another set of
telecons with them on a regular basis to try to address these
issues. There's been no action taken yet, but you know, we're
hopeful that that something will change.
The company says that they're committed to keeping the night sky
dark. These satellites could also impact radio astronomy.
In a statement following the first launch of Starlink's
satellites, the International Astronomical Union summarized their
concerns saying, 'despite notable efforts to avoid interfering
with radio astronomy frequencies, aggregate radio signals emitted
from the satellite constellations can still threaten astronomical
observations at radio wavelengths.
Recent advances in radio astronomy, such as producing the first
image of a black hole or understanding more about the formation
of planetary systems were only possible through concerted efforts
in safeguarding the radio sky from interference.'.
Another major concern is debris.
This summarized by a theory called the Kessler Syndrome, which
posits that when two objects collide in space, they generate more
debris that then collides with other objects, creating even more
shrapnel and litter until the entirety of Earth's lower orbit is
impassible. This hypothetical scenario came to life in February
of 2009 when an inactive Russian communications satellite Cosmo's
2251 collided with an active commercial communication satellite
operated by .U.S.-based
Iridium Satellite. The incident produced around 2,000 pieces of
debris. Debris is particularly important considering that SpaceX,
OneWeb and Amazon have all said that their satellites would have
a lifespan of only 5-7 years, which is about half the lifespan of
traditional satellites.
When the companies are finished with the satellites or they fail
in orbit, they plan to de-orbit them, which means that the
satellites would be intentionally pushed back into the Rarth's
atmosphere, where they would burn up during reentry.
One of the key questions facing this industry is who regulates
these megaconstellations.
And that's a gray area. We don't have a mandate to approve or
reject any space activity of any sovereign government
or of any company. Companies are under the jurisdiction of the
state in which they're located.
It's incumbent upon those states to put in place a system of
authorization and continuing supervision.
In the United States, the authority to regulate these satellites
falls largely on the Federal Communications Commission.
The FCC is in charge of radio frequency distribution and
mitigating any debris that may result from these satellites.
Under Ajit Pai, the FCC has been eager to work with these
companies. At a 1.6
million foot view, you might say we see an industry that is
changing quickly in space.
And we are trying to make sure that our regulations change with
it. A Byzantine licensing and regulatory approval system could be
a bottleneck that hurts consumers and innovators alike.
And that makes a difference because now, a satellite can be built
in a matter of months, or weeks, or even days in some cases, and
launched by a private provider on demand.
And that's why under my leadership, the FCC has been committed to
matching the tempo of the industry that we regulate.
Our space agenda involves cutting red tape and giving green
lights. In the same speech, Pai promised that the FCC would do a
comprehensive review of its orbital debris rules to address
recent market developments.
Other U.S. regulators also include the Air Force, the FAA, and in
some cases, NOAA.
The Air Force maintains the official catalog of objects on orbit
that the United States uses to avoid conjunctions and close
approaches on orbit.
The FAA controls the launch licenses, and if you have a camera
looking down on it, then you would need a license from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.
The connectivity market around the world is certainly well north
of a trillion dollars.
Of course, you have to look at what the addressable market is for
each of these companies.
They won't be competing very effectively in many cases with your
local mobile phone provider or maybe your fiber to the home
provider if you're lucky enough to live in one of those areas.
But for areas where there aren't a lot of good options or maybe
no options today, this is going to be an attractive opportunity.
However, the caution is that there really is a limit
to what many people in the world can pay for internet.
You know, if you live in an area where you lack clean water or
maybe don't have a consistent food supply, having internet
service may not be your first priority.
We're going to work first on the verticals where there are people
right now willing to pay a lot.
In airplanes and on boats.
And then we're also working with partners.
And those partners are governments and they're also terrestrial
mobile operators that want to extend their networks.
And then when we think about what we're trying to do as our
social mission, which is to connect everyone, I mean, the best
sort of line about the company is, OneWeb one world.
We want everybody to be connected.
Still, some more established satellite companies are not buying
into the hype of low Earth orbit megaconstellations.
ViaSat currently serves around 600,000 residential customers in
the U.S. and Europe and is launching a new geostationary
satellite that it expects to be in service globally by 2022.
The reason that we've focused on GEOs is that GEOs seem to be
able to deliver more bandwidth and more speed at lower cost, and
that's what our end users want.
There's also a number of really important risks that are still to
be dealt with in the LEO environment.
A lot of that is regulatory risk.
It's not clear that any individual company or country will be
able to scale safely to the number of satellites that are being
envisioned. And without that scale, there's a big question about
how economically viable these systems will be.
And the other really big issue is the geographic distribution of
demand. When you do a LEO system, you have to have your
satellites distributed according to orbital characteristics, not
according to the demand on the ground.
During a media call in May of 2019, Elon Musk estimated that
Starlink could bring in revenue of $30 billion a year and would
be key to fund his vision of colonizing Mars.
Experts agree that estimate is not far fetched.
We think that the satellite constellations can be tremendously
profitable. There's a significant upfront cost to launching the
satellite broadband networks, but they are very strong cash
generators. So when we when we think about Project Kuiper being,
you know, tapping into $100 billion opportunity, we think about
that $100 billion opportunity as consumer broadband as a whole,
with Project Kuiper, you know, in position to take a slice of
that. People shouldn't be swayed by hearing some seemingly
outrageous numbers of individual satellites being launched.
Really, we have to keep focused on what are they enabling, what's
the business going to be, and what kind of services do they offer
to consumers and businesses.