3 ms·

So are these laser equipped says inserted between/within the "chain" of previously deployed starlink says?

• NortySpock 6y ago
  Either they will retire old chains of satellites or just start new chains.
  • ceejayoz 6y ago
    The older satellites self-retire after a couple years, anyways, just by running out of fuel and deorbiting.
• snoshy 6y ago
  Not quite. In order for a laser sat to talk to another sat, the second sat needs to also have laser comms hardware on it. Given that these were the first 10 to boast of such hardware, initially they'll only be talking to each other. Over time, as Starlink pitches more sats into orbit with laser comms, they will have more and more peers to talk to. As the sister comment implies though, Starlink sats are in low Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) so they experience non-zero drag from the atmosphere. This slows them down, causing them to gradually fall back to Earth, creating a natural expected service lifetime for each satellite in orbit. So the expectation is that SpaceX will have to continually put up more and more replacements indefinitely as older sats decay and burn up in the atmosphere. These 10 laser sats are just the latest among a string of sats that are yet to come online with newer and better capabilities.
• Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  This particular set goes into their own plane in a much more highly inclined orbit than any of the existing ones.