SpaceX continues to grow the Starlink satellites in orbit with the deployment of another 23 satellites.
NASA Spaceflight reports that SpaceX Starlink has over 5000 active satellites.
Deployment of 23 @Starlink satellites confirmed
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 22, 2023
SpaceX Starlink has over 2.1 million customers globally. There are about 92,000 Starlink customers in Australia.
Satellite Communication Competition
OneWeb satellite constellation – a satellite constellation project that began operational deployment of satellites in 2020. Oneweb has 634 satellites in orbit. SpaceX Starlink currently has about eight times as many satellites and SpaceX will grow about 30 times based on the authorized first and second constellations. SpaceX plans to have over a hundred times as many satellites as the current number of OneWeb satellites.
China national satellite internet project – a planned satellite internet offering for the Chinese market.
Kuiper Systems – a planned 3,276 LEO satellite Internet constellation by an Amazon subsidiary. There have two prototype Kuiper satellites launched in October, 2023.
Hughes Network Systems – a current broadband satellite provider providing fixed, cellular backhaul, and airborne antennas. HughesNet has three satellites named Jupiter 1, Jupiter 2 and Jupiter 3. (also called EchoStar XVII and EchoStar XIX and EchoStar XXIV). They are in high orbits.
Viasat, Inc. – a current broadband satellite provider providing fixed, ground mobile, and airborne antennas. Viasat has four satellites in orbits like HughesNet.
O3b – Medium Earth orbit constellation that provides access to mobile phone operators and internet service providers. It covers only the equatorial region. O3B wil have eight satellites in orbit by the of 2023 and will four more launched in 2024.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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I have not had the pleasure of following this adventure. I am just curious who is going to clean after these satellites or no longer operational? What is the plan?
Low earth orbit satellites. After fuel runs out, they cannot maintain orbit and will burn up in the atmosphere. Over 700 Starlink that did not get to the right orbit or were not operating perfectly have already been guided into complete burn up. When the 5000 currently operating are done they will be guided into complete burnup like the hundreds that have already been de-orbited and destroyed with no impact.
Leading to metal pollution in the upper atmosphere? Watch the environmentalists throw a fit over it.
“The sky is littered with metal pollution from bits of space junk that burn up as they reenter the atmosphere, a new study reveals. This unexpected level of contamination, which will likely rise sharply in the coming decades, could change our planet’s atmosphere in ways we still don’t fully understand, researchers warn.”
See:
https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/falling-metal-space-junk-is-changing-earths-upper-atmosphere-in-ways-we-dont-fully-understand
They state that their satellites will burn up on re-entry.
Viasat somehow is papering over the loss in bandwidth from their recent sat failure by gap filling with Inmarsat capacity they acquired via the Inmarsat merger/acquisition, and not replacing it, so they are not going to be a significant competitor for a while. They have two insurance claims ongoing right now for sats (the Viasat-3 one and an Inmarsat one), which is causing discussion within the space insurance industry that some underwriters might pull out, making things harder for everyone else.