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I believe the constellation is about 90-95% complete now. The first shell at least. There's plans for more shells but that's for redundancy, not coverage.
by NelsonMinar 5y ago
I believe the constellation is about 90-95% complete now. The first shell at least. There's plans for more shells but that's for redundancy, not coverage.
- mastax 5y agoI was going to comment about how surprised I was that they almost finished the first shell without deploying laser links but apparently they have: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/spacex-adds-laser-links-to-starlink-satellites-to-serve-earths-polar-areas/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/space...
- scrumbledober 5y agoI think the laser interlinks are proving more difficult than SpaceX anticipated. I had expected them much earlier in the deployment than now, and it seems they are currently only planning them for polar orbits.
- sebzim4500 5y agoI think they need quite a lot of satellites in polar orbits to get coverage at the poles, and they have barely launched any yet. They are close to 100% coverage of the rest of the world already though.
- NelsonMinar 5y agoThey're doing polar launches but compared to the number of customers in sub-70 latitudes it's a pretty small market.
- dylan604 5y agoWell, 9/10 is still a fraction, just not as small as I thought it was. ;-) I must have fallen behind on launches, not realizing they were this far along.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoThat is a lot redundancy. Current satellite count is around 1,600, and FCC approved plans through phase 2 would bring that up to ~12,000