In June 2020, I went outside in the middle of the night to spot a train of Starlink satellites
in the sky.
They are designed to offer Internet access anywhere on Earth.
And that made wonder: how does satellite Internet work and why isn't it more common?
Let's start with the basics of satellite Internet.
Traditionally, your home is connected to your Internet service provider via a phone line,
coaxial cable, or fiber connection.
Your ISP, in turn, is then connected to the broader Internet, which is what allows you
to watch this video.
Now for satellite Internet, the cable at your end is replaced by a wireless connection to
a satellite in orbit around Earth.
But this satellite isn't connected to the Internet, so it beams the signal back down
to a ground station which is.
This brings us to the most obvious downside of satellite Internet: delay or latency.
Most communication satellites are orbiting in geostationary orbits at an altitude of
over 35,000km and that massive distance delays each Internet request by 400 to 600ms (roundtrip).
The signal needs to travel from you, all the way up to the satellite, down to the ground
station, and then all the way back to you again.
Now you'd think this wouldn't be much of a problem because these signals travel at the
speed of light.
But if you divide the distance between you and satellite by the speed of light, you get
116 milliseconds.
And this distance has to be traveled at least 4 times.
But all in all, satellite Internet is fine for browsing the web, but anything that requires
real-time interaction like gaming or video conferencing will be painful.
In terms of speed, it depends on where you're located.
Viasat, for instance, promises 12mbps in most areas, with some getting up to 100.
Not too bad, except that they limit your monthly usage to somewhere between 12 and 150GB, depending
on your plan.
And that means you can blow through the limit of the cheapest plan by downloading at max
speed for just 2 hours and 13 minutes.
Okay, so how does SpaceX plan to tackle these issues with Starlink?
Well, for starters, they want to launch 12,000 satellites into low-earth orbit, at an altitude
of about 550km.
That's 60 times closer than traditional communication satellites and reduces the latency to just
25 to 35ms.
Not as fast as fiber connections, but comparable to our current cable and cellular networks.
One side effect of this proximity is that the satellites don't stay in one place.
They constantly circle Earth, which has implications for the antenna that you will need to use
Starlink.
But more on that later.
As far as speed goes, we don't really know yet what SpaceX will offer.
But the US Air Force Research Laboratory has already tested Starlink aboard an aircraft
and achieved 610mbps.
Not bad for an in-flight test!
And in fact, this is 6 times faster than my current connection at home.
To put this in perspective, this kind of speed would allow you to download a modern game
of say 50GB in just over 11 minutes.
My current connection, which is no slough, needs an additional hour!
SpaceX's COO said that you'd be far happier with Starlink than with your current service
as she promised more bandwidth for the same price or lower prices for the same amount
of bandwidth.
Let's move on to hardware.
Launching 12,000 satellites seem like a big challenge, and to cope with that, Starlink
satellites are small, light, and cheap.
They weight just 260kg (560lb) and are launched in batches of 60 on top of a reused Falcon
9 rocket.
Do they really need that many satellites?
Well, SpaceX only needs 24 launches to have global coverage, so that's 1440 satellites.
Every additional satellite improves the coverage and increases capacity.
At the time of making this video (August 2020), they already completed 10 launches, so they're
making good progress.
But by far the coolest piece of hardware on Starlink satellites are the lasers.
As said before, the satellites are connected to the Internet via ground stations.
But they're also connected to each other with lasers, forming a giant mesh network.
And that comes in handy for long-distance communications.
Here's a map of undersea fiber cables that connect various countries to each other.
Imagine you're in South Africa and you want to interact with a service in California.
Your request has to go through a series of fiber cables that largely follow the coasts
of continents.
This isn't the shortest path, and on top of that, the fiber cables go through a series
of repeaters and routers, all adding more delays.
With Starlink, your request can be beamed up to the nearest satellite, which can use
its lasers to forward it to other satellites that are closer to a ground station near California.
A nice trick to reduce latency, but it also increases resiliency.
If a satellite cannot reach a ground station, because it's offline, it can simply relay
the traffic to satellites further away that can access a ground station.
Other hardware onboard are small ion thrusters.
These are used to boost the orbits of satellites, maneuver in space, and de-orbit at the end
of their life.
But why would you need to boost your satellite?
Or why, de-orbit?
Well, this is done to prevent creating more space debris, also referred to as space junk.
NASA is currently tracking over 500,000 pieces of debris in orbit around Earth.
They vary in size, going from small pieces of paint all the way up to dead and controllable
satellites.
But the problem is that they travel at speeds of up to 28,000km/h (17,500mph), almost 10
times faster than a bullet.
At these speeds, even tiny pieces of paint can cause severe damage to other satellites
in orbit.
A damaged satellite can then break apart, make more debris, and can cause more collisions.
This endless cascade is known as Kessler syndrome, and if it happens, it will make space activities
really hard or even impossible, severely impacting us.
No more satellites for GPS, weather predictions, TV broadcasts, and no more International Space
Station.
SpaceX is doing a lot of work to prevent this.
The reason why Starlink satellites are so close to Earth is not only to reduce latency
but also because, at these altitudes, the satellites experience atmospheric drag.
If they don't periodically boost themselves up, they will burn up in the atmosphere after
a couple of years.
Cleaning up after themselves.
So this way, SpaceX does not have to worry about an unresponsive satellite.
I'll just come back down on its own.
That's much better than leaving the satellites in orbit, regardless of whether they're still
operational.
Something that is actually fairly common.
Since the beginning of space flight, humanity has launched about 9000 satellites.
5000 of those are still in orbit today, but only 1900 of them are operational.
The rest is dead, unused, or uncontrollable.
They are space debris.
Starlink satellites also have an autonomous collision avoidance system that uses data
from the Department of Defense to automatically move out of the way of approaching debris.
No human required; the system handles it all.
Now let's move on to customers.
Who is Starlink intended for anyway?
I mean, most people in western countries have decent Internet connections, right?
Well, I was shocked to find an FCC report that said 21 million Americans or 6% of the
population don't have a broadband internet connection.
Another study put that number at 42 million.
And Microsoft suggested that 157 million Americans don't have Internet that qualifies as "broadband."
And that's in a country we consider "well-developed."
If we zoom out and look at the rest of the world, things become even worse.
UNESCO estimates that only 55% of households have an internet connection.
That's due to bad coverage or expensive service.
In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, a single GB of data costs nearly 40% of the average
monthly wage.
So that's who Starlink is intended for.
Clearly, there is a market for low-cost, high-speed internet access anywhere on Earth.
And that market could become really big.
Morgan Stanley estimated that the market for satellite internet would be worth over $400
billion dollars by 2040.
Okay, so what do these future customers need to use Starlink?
Well, based on leaks, you'll need a relatively small satellite dish outside your house.
It's similar to regular satellite dishes but has a much sleeker design.
Using it is dead simple: plug-in & point at the sky.
That's quite different from say TV dishes, which have to be pointed at a specific place
in the sky.
That's because TV broadcast satellites are in geostationary orbit, they follow the Earth's
rotation and are always in the same spot in the sky.
Starlink satellites aren't.
They constantly float around.
To fix this, the Starlink terminal has two features.
First, it has built-in motors that can automatically adjust the angle of the dish.
Once in that position, it uses a phased array antenna to electronically steer the signal
towards a Starlink satellite.
It can do this without physically moving the device and can switch from satellite to satellite
as they pass over you.
That brings us to the last part of this video: why has nobody attempted to do this before?
Well, mainly because it's very expensive to design satellites and launch them into space.
A launch on top of the Ariane 5 or Atlas V rockets costs over $165 million dollars.
That's quite a lot in comparison to SpaceX's Falcon 9, which only costs $62 million dollars
or less than $30 million if you choose a Falcon 9 that has flown before.
This gives SpaceX a big advantage.
Every-time they launch a Falcon 9 for a customer, they can make a profit, AND they get to keep
the landed rocket.
So essentially, each SpaceX customer brings in more money that can be invested in Starlink.
But aside from SpaceX, there is also Amazon and OneWeb who are giving this a shot.
Amazon's plans are called Project Kuiper and include over 3,000 satellites, also in low
Earth orbit.
But currently, they haven't launched any yet, and it's unclear who will launch them.
OneWeb meanwhile has plans to launch 650 satellites and so far managed to launch 34 (March 21st,
2020).
In 2020, however, the company faced financial issues and was saved by the UK government,
which took a 45% stake in it.
But again, of all these 3 companies, only SpaceX can launch their own satellites.
But Amazon might follow in the future when Blue Origin gets up and running.
Now personally can't wait to see what SpaceX will do with Starlink and how the market of
satellite Internet will evolve.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and considering subscribing to the channel
if you haven't already.
Thanks for watching and till next time!