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Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite constellation is one of the projects on which the company SpaceX is working hard to make it successful.
What is Starlink Satellite Constellation?
According to Wikipedia, Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being constructed by SpaceX providing satellite internet access. It is a division of the rocket and spacecraft building company SpaceX.
Aim of launching Starlink satellite constellation
Nearly half of the world’s population doesn’t have access to the internet. Elon Musk’s Starlink is trying to provide internet to the people who have poor/no internet connectivity. They claim that their internet service will be suitable for areas across the globe where internet connectivity is still a challenge.
SpaceX aims to have 42000 Starlink satellite constellations in low earth orbit (LEO) to cover almost every part of our planet earth. They set the target to launch 12000 satellites over the next five years, and half of them by the end of 2024.
Besides solving the problem of internet connectivity, the real motive behind solving this problem is that SpaceX wants to earn revenue to keep going towards its whole purpose i.e. making life multiplanetary.
Elon musk in Satellite 2020 conference interview said that to continue they need roughly 3 Billion US Dollars per year for rocket launching and servicing. To fulfill this demand they estimated that the idea of broadband can help them roughly generate 30 Billion US Dollars in revenue, which they can use to continue. So they are investing in projects like starlink satellite constellation.
Progress accomplished till now
· SpaceX has launched 1737 Starlink satellites out of which 1635 are currently active.
· They launched the first batch of 60 satellites on 23rd May 2019.
· A total of 120 and 833 Starlink satellites were launched in the year 2019 and 2020 respectively using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Hurdles to be overcome
- . Some astronomers commented that project like this will be a barrier in further research. 2019 Physics Nobel laureate Prof. Didier Queloz (Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge) explained this issue in the below video.
o Elon Musk said in response, Starlink will cause zero problems for astronomy and if any problem arises they will take corrective actions.
How Starlink will be a problem in astronomical research?
Before we directly come to the point we need to understand that SpaceX Starlink is not the only one company which trying to send satellites in low earth orbit (LEO). There are many competitor companies like Oneweb, Telesat, Amazon Project Kuiper, Kepler communications etc and all these companies are sending thousands of satellites in LEO which are visible at the beginning and ending of night because they reflect light from the sun, thus acting as a barrier in astronomical research.
2. If there will be a higher number of satellites in the sky there will always be a risk of crashing satellites.
Helpful tip
The density of satellites revolving around the earth and their live location. You can watch it on Stuffin.space.
Below is the snapshot from stuffin.space.
Here:
Red color dotes represent Satellite.
Blue color dotes represent Rocket Body.
Grey color dotes represent Debris.
3. Billions of dollars are spent in developing ground-based powerful telescopes like ELT(Extremely large telescope) in Chile, the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and many more are under construction, and if in the sky there will be huge no satellites then it may increase the difficulty in exploring the outer space.
4. Besides the above-mentioned problems in astronomy, the biggest challenge which SpaceX is facing is with the user terminal, and making it a affordable service for people across the globe.
Conclusion
Definitely, it is a good idea to improve and provide amazing internet access across the globe. But actions must be taken to reduce the negative effects of the other side like we will be able to see them through naked eyes. Therefore, humans on earth will see human-made stars more than natural ones. And all the issues mentioned above must be solved along with further progress. So that we don’t miss any astronomical discoveries in the future.
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