3 ms·
Can someone explain what is the point of having long lines of satellites traveling on the same path?
by gondaloof 3y ago
Can someone explain what is the point of having long lines of satellites traveling on the same path?
- NelsonMinar 3y agoThe closely packed dots you see are a train of satellites just after launch. They'll spread out over a couple of weeks.
- crote 3y agoThe ones really close together are freshly launched and still being moved into their final position. However, all satellites are by design placed into a small number of orbits, see [0]. For example, phase 1 consisted of 72 different orbits with 22 sats each, so each sat would be 1/22th of an orbit behind the previous one - and the orbits are shifted in a similar fashion around the earth. This ensures that there is a uniform global coverage, as a new sat will move over an area right when another one moves out. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#/media/File:Starlink_SpaceX_1584_satellites_72_Planes_22each.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#/media/File:Starlink_...