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Live Starlink Satellite Map
- fnord77 5y agoDozens over the open ocean and uninhabited places. between zero and 2 over california. why did they position them this way?
- juancampa 5y agoThose are currently over the ocean but will eventually (after ~1.5h) orbit around to more useful areas. Satellites in low earth orbit need to move very quickly to stay up. If you want a satellite to stay over the same spot you'd need to put it way way above, in geostationary orbit[1], and get really bad latency. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit
- dangrossman 5y agoThey're not in geo-stationary orbits. A satellite that's over open ocean now will be over land later in the day. If you zoom in on the visualization, you can see how fast they're moving.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gmiller123456 5y agoThere are a lot of people in the ocean at any given time. This is exactly the type of scenario Starlink is designed for: providing access in very remote and rural areas.
- hnlmorg 5y agoNo it's not. Starlink requires satellites have visibility of a ground station and that the users dish be registered to a ground station. Currently neither roaming is supported nor is satellites communicating with other satellites to hop to a ground station that otherwise wouldn't be in range. Thus that makes Starlink inappropriate for use on ships and other platforms in the ocean (stationary or otherwise). Future iterations of Starlink might support this, the service is still in beta at the moment, but it would be a jump to suggest that is why there are satellites over the oceans. What's actually happening is they're not on a geo-stationary orbit. ie they're travelling faster than the Earth's rotation. So they'll spend time over land and time over the oceans too.
- ganoushoreilly 5y agoStarlink Beta users (myself included) already received an updated notice about Sat to Sat laser communications coming online in the near future. It's not a jump to say that's why they are over the ocean, in fact it's already been proven that Starlink is in use on SPACEX recovery platforms. Further, Starlink is working with major airlines already to provide faster network connectivity to commercial and private flight. Starlink will be available across the globe, facilitate land, air, and sea access. Being designed for this function isn't predicated on current availability. A plane is designed to fly, but because it's on a tarmac doesn't suddenly make that a false statement.
- ghshephard 5y agoThe parent had it right. They are over the ocean because they are in LEO and are constantly in motion relative to earth, it's got nothing to do with Sat-to-Sat laser (though that should enable access to remote areas like the ocean)
- frankfrankfrank 5y agoAnother aspect is that the objective is to provide global communications over oceans too, e.g., for container ships, sail boats, planes, global surveillance, etc. The cross-satellite comms are not yet ready to essentially create a global mesh-net, but that's the plan.
- hnlmorg 5y agoStarlink doesn't support roaming between ground stations. Plus if you look at the oceans you can see there aren't any ground stations there anyways. So you wouldn't get internet out in the oceans even with Starlink. At least not in its current phase -- future releases, maybe? The reason there are satelites over the oceans is simply because they're not at a geo-stationary orbit. ie their orbit is faster than the rotation of the earth.
- bagels 5y agoTo be fair, some early pr and articles talked about satellite to satellite hops across oceans, even.though this is not a current capability.
- KiwiJohnno 5y agocurrent starlink satelites in polar orbit do have satellite to satellite routing capability, via laser comm links. More info here: 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...
- bagels 5y agoThere are only a few in polar orbits, from what I've seen.
- rtkwe 5y ago> Starlink doesn't support roaming between ground stations That's mostly a beta problem and Starlink is saying they plan to allow roaming eventually. From what I've seen it sounds like right now they only look for your dish in whatever cell it's registered to and don't do any discovery of dishes, it's all preprogrammed.
- rtkwe 5y agoStarlink is a low altitude constellation, those satellites are moving relative to the surface not stationary like traditional communication satellites. They're setup in a mesh of orbits at give or take the same inclination just offset in phase so there's some moving north east and others moving south east over an area at any given time. So every satellite will spend a lot of time over oceans just because the Earth is mostly ocean.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoSome serious ground station coverage in Chile, South America already. EDIT: Deal with the Chile gov to rapidly solve for rural comms [1]. [1] https://developingtelecoms.com/telecom-technology/satellite-communications-networks/11470-chile-turns-to-starlink-s-leo-satellites-for-remote-connectivity.html https://developingtelecoms.com/telecom-technology/satellite-...
- BerkeyMcBerkey 5y agoGiven an altitude of 500-550KM, what is the approx. beam footprint for these satellites (individually)?
- tnorthcutt 5y agoPage 5 of this FCC filing indicates 3.5 million square kilometers, BUT that's assuming 1,150km altitude: https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8174403/SpaceX_Application_-.0.pdf https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8174403/S... But that may provide some information you find interesting. Edit: this previous HN discussion also touches on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21325720
- gmiller123456 5y agoAbout a radius of 1589 miles or 22.9 degrees. Arc length along Earth's surface = R * acos(R/(R+h)) Where R is the Earth's radius, and h is the height above the surface. https://www.celestialprogramming.com/horizondistance.html https://www.celestialprogramming.com/horizondistance.html
- frankfrankfrank 5y agoIs anyone aware of a list of when ground stations went online or a scheduled for future ground stations going online? I'm curious because a review of starlink that I don't think was all that dated, did some testing from a rural middle American ranch where they were unable to get a connection, supposedly due to the satellite being unable to connect to reach a ground station. The surface level reach of the satellites should have not been an issue though based on my calculations unless some base stations cam online since the testing done as part of the review I watched.
- mlindner 5y agoThat wasn't what they asked. They asked for beam footprint, not viewing angle of the satellite.
- 5y ago
- stopnamingnuts 5y agoI love watching these overhead in real time. For anyone not already familiar: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
- BuildTheRobots 5y agoThat site is both beautiful and impressive, though for some reason it took over a minute for it to load in FF, almost instant in Chrome.
- cptskippy 5y ago> though for some reason it took over a minute for it to load in FF That's a hard you problem. It loads in Firefox and is responsive in 1.13s on a system with an nVidia Quadro and 1.59s in a 4c/8gb VM with software rendering. * changed ms to s (herp derp) ** It took 1.76s to load in Chrome and 2.83s in Edge on the Quadro for me.
- gspr 5y agoIf you like this kind of thing, I recommend Stellarium. It's FOSS, runs locally, and has a gazillion features! You're also not limited to viewing from Earth :-)
- ChrisArchitect 5y ago(Not new) Further discussion from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556015
- BuildTheRobots 5y agoI know this is a stupid comment, but looking at the site really made me appreciate how far north the UK actually is.
- ghaff 5y agoThe Gulf Stream really throws off intuitions of how North America and Europe line up with each other.
- paxys 5y agoAnd the Mercator projection.
- _Microft 5y agoMercator projection does not influence how far north something appears on a map. It is making the UK appear relatively larger than it is to the US though. This is because it is not an equal-area projection and warps areas further from the equator (UK) more than the ones closer (US).
- paxys 5y agoIt absolutely does. Looking at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Mercator_projection_Square.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Mercator..., it would seem that the UK is a bit north of the equator, but comfortably within the "center".
- _Microft 5y agoOK, I see what you mean, you were just referring to the unintuitive mapping between latitude and position on the map.
- pkaye 5y agoYou can compare the sizes of countries using this website. https://thetruesize.com/ https://thetruesize.com/
- shagie 5y agoSome other fun related tools and searches http://www.stuffin.space/?search=StarLink http://www.stuffin.space/?search=StarLink https://starlink.sx https://starlink.sx https://platform.leolabs.space/visualization https://platform.leolabs.space/visualization (add "StarLink" to the search at the top - this one is particularly useful to get an idea of the orbits as you can speed it up to see what's going on)
- newuser46547 5y agoEarth does not show up until you enable Javascript on the page.
- dkersten 5y agoIsn't that to be expected for a "live" map?
- newuser46547 5y agoYes, but i found it kind of funny.
- Gustomaximus 5y agoI think these constallations need to move to some sort of multi-nation joint system. It's seems likely we'll have 5+ of these constallations up in the near future and all the crowding issues associated with that. It would be a great humankind project to make 1 or 2 joint systems. Can have relevant base station control to the individual nations for their political and security preferences.
- brianwawok 5y agoNothing says success project like bureaucracies of 200 nations involved.
- eloff 5y agoThe volume of space is still really large though. If managed well, it will be fine. For some intuition around this, the volume is greater than the part of the atmosphere where airplanes fly, but the traffic is much less and more predictable. It's good to have some competition, additional capacity, and redundancy by having separate networks.
- gspr 5y agoYeah, the traffic is more predictable, but when something goes wrong, traffic in airspace can easily maneuver to avoid problems. And moreover, in airspace a disaster is local – the debris from a satellite collision is unpredictable and can stay around for years and years!
- rtkwe 5y agoYeah this could go bad though there are some mitigations in place. These are relatively low, iirc the full satellites are supposed to burn up in a few years once they go offline without any intervention.
- zamadatix 5y agoFor Starlink, other constellations are being launched in orbits twice as high. Once one collision occurs at those altitudes it takes many lifetimes for the uncontrolled debris to leave ortbit.
- ape4 5y agoNothing over the poles yet?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JaggedJax 5y agoThey have some polar launches out of Vandenberg planned over the next few months: https://www.spacexnow.com/upcoming.php https://www.spacexnow.com/upcoming.php
- gimmeThaBeet 5y agoJeez, when visualized like that, that's a lot more than I was expecting. How many multiples of this do they currently expect they want to get their vision of a general service running? Maybe a dumb question, what are the ones that seem to be a bunch in an arc/line? They seem to be a somewhat continuous-ish numbered ones, but not very strictly. Is the latitude limited by physics or just their limited operation? I know the really great case for this is more remote areas, but just wondering like the Nordics, Moscow. Doesn't get much more remote than Siberia. Are they just out of luck? Probably dumb questions, don't know much about space flight, just kind of astonished by the amount of satellites. I kind of wish it made more sense for me when it becomes available. My internet's okay, but my area is probably populated enough I might not be the target audience, or a place where it works out well.
- _Microft 5y agoThey have a license for 7x as many (12k vs 1.7k right now) and are applying for up to 30k. The bunched ones will be freshly launched batches of satellites that have not reached their target altitude, they will spread out in the process. The latitudes that they overfly are currently limited to up to 53°. The explanation might not be the easiest but here it is: satellites go around in a circle or ellipse that lies on an imagined plane, the so-called orbital plane [0]. This plane can be at an angle with the equatorial plane which is called the "inclination" (this value also gives the maximum latitude that they reach). Starlink uses a lot of these planes, each rotated a bit further around the globe [1]. This is so that all areas on the ground will be in sight of one of the satellites eventually. Starlink should also be able to function a bit further to the north than 53° latitude right now but for any latitude much higher than this, users will need to wait until SpaceX has a working network in polar orbits (i.e. not flying on these tilted plains but more or less directly over the poles instead). They are required to eventually serve Alaska, for example. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_plane_(astronomy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_plane_(astronomy) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_of_the_ascending_node https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_of_the_ascending_nod...
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
- scarecrowbob 5y agoDumb question, but how long do these take to de-orbit?
- papercrane 5y agoWithout propulsion they'll de-orbit in about 5 year.
- sand500 5y agoWeren't there few in a polar orbit?
- tshaddox 5y agoI was camping in Yosemite earlier this year and happened to look up and see a line of these directly overhead. It was a bit funny being the only person in my group who knew about Starlink and thus the only person not perplexed or even a little freaked out by the sight.
- beamatronic 5y agoYou must live under a rock, to not know about Starlink by now. Don't people read the news on a regular basis to keep themselves educated?
- tshaddox 5y agoI don't see any reason to expect people to have heard about it unless they follow tech business news. Or maybe astronomy.
- croutonwagon 5y agoI just asked my wife. She has no idea what it is. I think for people they don’t keep up with tech and have reliable internet options it’s an out of sight out of mind. I even proposed at one point we divert the cable budget we canceled to get in on the beta and run dual wan/internet. And she says I don’t listen
- ghaff 5y agoI can guarantee you that a miniscule number of people have heard about Starlink. It has zero relevance to many of the people who regularly follow tech news even it's very relevant to a small subset.
- 3gg 5y agoPeople are dealing with their own problems. An education also does not amount to knowing trivia.
- dontreact 5y agoWhy can't they have satellites orbiting over the north or south poles? Can anyone ELI5 this?
- rtkwe 5y agoThey could but there aren't many people up there to sell to so they cut down the coverage to save a lot of money on the number of satellites they need to launch.
- sudhirj 5y agoThey can, but I don’t think they want to, that would waste satellites on a very low population circle. Think of each orbit as a hula hoop around the earth. You’d want to pack as many hoops as you can over the populated areas, with maybe one or two to provide the basic level of service required to the poles.
- 16bytes 5y agoThey technically can, but then you'd have those satellites spend a ton of their time over nearly unpopulated areas doing nothing. If you instead launch at about a 60 degrees inclination, you spend all of your time between N60 latitude and S60 latitude where it's a lot more populated. This lets you have more coverage in populated areas with fewer satellites. Additionally, there's no satellite to satellite link capability yet, so for an uplink to work you need a base station in range for the satellite to talk to (you can see these as a "wifi" symbol on the map). It's too expensive to put base stations pretty much anywhere in the artic.
- youngtaff 5y agoLeo Labs visualisation is better in my view as it's not just limited to Starlink sats https://platform.leolabs.space/visualizations/leo#search=starlink;view=lastTracked https://platform.leolabs.space/visualizations/leo#search=sta...
- dang 5y agoRelated thread from a year ago: Realtime Starlink Satellite Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556015 - June 2020 (176 comments)
- LeoPanthera 5y agoI clicked the "OneWeb" button and was surprised how many satellites they had up, given that they only recently came out of bankruptcy. I'm worried by OneWeb. Unlike Starlink, their satellites are so high up that if they die, they will just stay there, cluttering up space, unlike Starlink's which are so low that they will fall out of the sky on their own in ~5 years.
- jdorfman 5y agoWhere is the data coming from?
- mlindner 5y agoThe US government freely publishes the orbital elements of tracked objects. Nicely organized site containing most of the info: https://celestrak.com/ https://celestrak.com/ Actual US government origin site: https://www.space-track.org/ https://www.space-track.org/
- jdorfman 5y agoAwesome, thank you.
- diplodocusaur 5y agoLike a Dyson Sphere, but backwards.
- lokimedes 5y agoFor the orbitally inclined, CeleTrack provides an excellent viewer with all NORAD objects: https://celestrak.com/cesium/orbit-viz.php?tle=/pub/TLE/catalog.txt&satcat=/pub/satcat.txt&referenceFrame=1 https://celestrak.com/cesium/orbit-viz.php?tle=/pub/TLE/cata...