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It works with any phone with LTE. It requires larger antennas. Starlink had to launch the V2 satellites which are larger and have new, big antenna for Direct-t
by ianburrell 2y ago
It works with any phone with LTE.
It requires larger antennas. Starlink had to launch the V2 satellites which are larger and have new, big antenna for Direct-to-cell. They were meant for Starship, but that was delayed so they developed V2 Mini for Falcon 9. The version with antenna started launching beginning of year. My understanding is that are close to numbers for providing global coverage.
- stavros 2y agoThat's amazing, I'm having trouble believing that a mobile phone's antenna can talk to space, 500km away. Do you know what sort of bandwidth these will have?
- ianburrell 2y agoThe bandwidth will be small. I saw 2-5 Mbps for the whole cell covering a city. Devices will be limited to messages, small amounts of data, and voice.
- comboy 2y agoBut it's still a mobile phone transmission power (1W?) and then r^2. Distinguishing that from noise seems mind-boggling.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoReally just makes one think what sort of capability military has.
- JaimeThompson 2y agoCheck out the Orion series of Sigint birds[1] " The satellites have estimated mass close to 5,200 kg and very large (estimated 100 m diameter) radio reflecting dishes." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite)
- stavros 2y agoThat's still the difference between lost in the mountains and "my coordinates are X, Y".
- RoddaWallPro 2y agoBut just to clarify, because I'm also having a hard time imagining this, an LTE antenna in a cell phone can beam data to a satellite and have it picked up? Even at whatever low kbps? That is insane to me!
- wmf 2y agoYes. It's been demonstrated a few times.
- lxgr 2y agoThere are IoT devices that can talk to geostationary satellites, and these are roughly 100 times further up (36000 km vs. 300-1000 for LEO)! I have one that’s significantly smaller and lighter than a smartphone, antenna and all. These satellites partially make up for the distance by deploying huge antennas, sometimes augmented by large reflector meshes that can only unfold in space.
- stavros 2y agoYeah, that's pretty crazy, I guess that's what GPS receivers do, in the end (though at pretty low bandwidths).
- dotnet00 2y agoAs far as I'm aware, the V2 minis are different from the DTC sats. V2 mini just has expanded network bandwidth. DTC are a specific variant of the V2 mini with the hardware needed for DTC. Not all V2 launches, even now, are DTC variants.
- asadotzler 2y agoCorrect. A small fraction are DTC capable, often times only a couple per launch but increasing of late. Still a small minority of each launch stack.
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah and only a few of each launch are direct to cell capable. Probably until starship works.