
Realtime Starlink Satellite Map - deegles
https://satellitemap.space/indexA.html
======
gpm
The circles in this map are really deceptive. They're two fixed sizes
depending on altitude with no apparent relation to actual coverage.

Here is my attempt at estimating actual coverage, based on a 25 degree angle
from the horizon
[https://i.imgur.com/poj8cae.png](https://i.imgur.com/poj8cae.png)

I've included a screenshot of the code I modified so people can play with it
themselves. I made a slight simplification in my math (explained in the
comments in the screenshot), but I think it should be close enough. Edit:
Pictorial explanation of simplification
[https://i.imgur.com/XtADkmh.png](https://i.imgur.com/XtADkmh.png)

~~~
walrus01
The circles in the map match what a number of offline (TLE based) standalone
Linux and Windows satellite pass prediction tools will show you. They assume
that each ground location is on a flat plane with no hills or mountains, and
the size of the cone extending from the satellite to the ground is the full
coverage of everything the satellite can see (such as if you had a magical
laser on the satellite capable of illuminating any ground location visible
from the satellite).

Such as if you had a theoretical, nonexistant ground terminal that was capable
of communicating with a satellite at only 1 degree look angle elevation above
the horizon.

Of course in reality this is not the case and most systems that communicate
with LEO satellites will have minimum elevation look angles of 15-20 degrees
above the horizon.

The circles do, however, provide a useful approximate scale of how much ground
area is visible at any given time from the point of view of a satellite. It's
not intended to be perfect.

~~~
Dylan16807
> Such as if you had a theoretical, nonexistant ground terminal that was
> capable of communicating with a satellite at only 1 degree look angle
> elevation above the horizon.

No, no, that is not even close to true. Measure the big circles. They have a
radius _roughly_ the same as satellite altitude. From an altitude of 550km,
the area the satellite can see all the way down to the horizon is _wider than
the contiguous united states, east to west_.

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advisedwang
> Opinion > No evidence a working starlink network can offer lower latency, or
> lower prices, than terrestial > > Impact on earth based telescopes has not
> been discussed > > Starlink is a play for pentagon funding to keep SpaceX
> launch schedule busy?

Author doesn't seem to have any love for Starlink. I wonder why the built the
site.

~~~
modeless
That's strange. All of those points are wrong.

Starlink isn't designed to offer lower latency or lower prices than existing
terrestrial wired or wireless ISPs (at least, decent ones). Instead it's
designed to offer a low latency wireless service in places where that has
never been available at all. Which is most of the land area of the Earth, and
all of the ocean. It may also be cheaper and/or faster than some very bad
terrestrial ISPs, because there are a lot of those out there, but that's not
what it's designed for.

Impact on earth-based telescopes has been discussed endlessly, to the point
where it seems like there's a law that you can't mention Starlink on the
Internet without talking about it. And SpaceX responded by talking to the
astronomers most affected by Starlink and adding a sunshade that should
prevent the satellites from ruining their images. Which is more than any other
satellite operator has ever done, AFAIK, and there are many satellites much
brighter than Starlink in the sky today.

The Pentagon is certainly interested in Starlink, but commercial service has
much higher revenue potential. There are several competitors planning to do
roughly the same thing as Starlink, so the business plan is at least
plausible.

~~~
sneak
> _Starlink isn 't designed to offer lower latency or lower prices than
> existing terrestrial wired or wireless ISPs (at least, decent ones). Instead
> it's designed to offer a low latency wireless service in places where that
> has never been available at all. Which is most of the land area of the
> Earth, and all of the ocean._

It is widely believed that a huge chunk of Starlink’s revenue, if not ~all of
it, will come from leasing faster-than-currently-available low latency links
to HFT companies for nyc-lon and such. This is why their first orbital planes
being launched are for the north atlantic and CONUS.

Providing internet to the underserved areas is secondary; the cash will come
from beating terrestrial fiber links (even idealized great circle ones)
between markets that are already extremely well connected.

One such private low latency link between Seacaucus and LSEG will probably pay
2-5x what everyone else on the planet combined pays for internet access in
underserved areas.

~~~
tuatoru
> It is widely believed that a huge chunk of Starlink’s revenue, if not ~all
> of it, will come from leasing faster-than-currently-available low latency
> links to HFT companies for nyc-lon and such. This is why their first orbital
> planes being launched are for the north atlantic and CONUS.

True? I'd heard that the initial target market was passenger planes over the
ocean, cruise ships, and similar maritime and aerial activity that has to use
geosynchronous satellites at present.

Covid-19 has thrown a spanner into the works of that plan, for a while. I'm
sure people with money won't be turned away.

Longer term, remembering that Musk hails from South Africa, I thought the plan
was to bring internet to failed states or barely functional areas in Africa
(outback Namibia/Zimbabwe/Tanzania etc) and possibly also the Americas and the
Middle East).

~~~
m4rtink
There are multiple GEO sats that already provide service for popular airliner
routes and for cruise ships.

~~~
modeless
... with 600ms latency. Starlink will blow them out of the water.

~~~
m4rtink
Oh, sure, the latency will be lower - it's just that without these satellites
it was simply not possible to get continuous coverage on long over ocean
flights, so something is better than nothing.

While for airplanes I think the latency might not be that problematic (I think
VoIP in plane package full of people would not be very welcome) you indeed
want low latency connection on a cruise ship.

~~~
modeless
Regular web browsing also benefits massively from lower latency, not just
VoIP.

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mhandley
This map seems to have some inaccuracies. I'm not sure what the circles are
supposed to be, but they're wrong for the satellite's coverage limits - looks
like they're shown at about half of the actual 940km coverage radius. It also
looks like their altitude is incorrect - the ones in operational orbits are at
550km. Eyeballing this map, it looks like they're shown at something like 1/3
to 1/2 of that - certainly much lower than they should be.

~~~
wcoenen
In the /about it's explained that the circle represents the locations where
the satellite is at least 60 degrees above the horizon.

550 km is the altitude for the operational orbits, the satellites are deployed
lower and need to raise their orbit. (But I see most are labeled around 550
km, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.)

~~~
mhandley
The SpaceX FCC filings indicate reachability down to 25 degrees above the
horizon, so it's not clear why 60 degrees was chosen in this animation.

I do understand that the satellites are deployed into lower orbits, but
satellites from launches 1, 2 and 3 (and some of launch 4) are now at 550km:

[https://twitter.com/StarlinkUpdates/status/12732692201308610...](https://twitter.com/StarlinkUpdates/status/1273269220130861065)

Those launches are shown way too low in this map. From measuring pixels, I
make them to be roughly 200km.

Edit: maybe I'm being pedantic here, but the combination of showing
artifically small coverage zones, plus showing satellites much lower than they
are so giving a misleading impression of how much area each satellite can see,
taken together give the misleading impression that Starlink coverage will be
worse than it will actually be.

~~~
LeoPanthera
Possibly intentionally misleading, the author makes several disparaging
comments of Starlink at the bottom of /about

~~~
greeneggs
I think you, and others, might just be misinterpreting the point of the map.
My take is that it is to help people look for the satellites. A 60 degree
above the horizon cutoff isn't unreasonable, and making the circles much
larger would clutter the map.

I find it helpful, anyway. (And to me, at least, it is more helpful than a
hypothetical coverage map, since I can't get Starlink internet now.)

~~~
bigtones
No it's not being misinterpreted, the parent comment is right - the website
author has a negative biased agenda against Starlink and Elon Musk, as
evidenced from the website's own About page:

* No evidence a working starlink network can offer lower latency, or lower prices, than terrestial

* Impact on earth based telescopes has not been discussed

* Starlink is a play for pentagon funding to keep SpaceX launch schedule busy?

~~~
shaklee3
How is this biased:

"No evidence a working starlink network can offer lower latency, or lower
prices, than terrestial"?

The FCC themselves don't believe the 100ms, and the price nobody in the
industry thinks will be affordable since they haven't released any info about
their user antenna.

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erwinh
Check out: [https://space-search.io/?search=starlink](https://space-
search.io/?search=starlink) for another type of visualisation of starlink!

Doesn't include coverage yet but I do plan to add that with some kind of
heatmap. I think these static circles in the OP are a bit deceptive in
indicating 'coverage' as these satellites are constantly moving.

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jodrellblank
The (or some of the) Starlink satellites stand out as a very distinctive line
on [http://stuffin.space/](http://stuffin.space/) currently over the Pacific
and West Coast North America.

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ruslan
Is there any decent resource explaining how the whole mesh of Starlink
sattelites communicate to each others and to the ground ? Do they use RF radio
or modulated laser ? What equipment should be used by end users and what
frequency range ?

~~~
mcpherrinm
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/gknla6/this_looks...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/gknla6/this_looks_like_3_ufos_on_a_stick_with_a_small/)

Photos here of a starlink ground station with three small devices that are
quite possibly the end-user equipment.

~~~
shaklee3
Those radomes are extremely expensive. If that's the user terminal then it's
going to be quite a bit more expensive than any consumer service.

~~~
walrus01
Those are the trunk link earth stations. Not the CPEs.

To be pedantic the radomes are only a couple of thousand dollars each, it's
what's inside them that's expensive. Spherical radomes up to a couple of
meters in size are kind of a commodity item. The Cobham-manufactured, agile,
ku-band tracking dish antennas with Rx+Tx RF chains are expensive.

The small white things not in radomes shown in the picture are possibly beta
test CPEs.

~~~
shaklee3
Right, sorry. I was referring to the large white ball. Ka/Ku radomes are not
cheap. The only information on antenna size is from Elon saying it's the size
of a pizza box. Those look too small to be the CPE (imo).

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throwawaysea
Will they cover the North and South poles as well? I know there isn't much of
a customer base, but it would be interesting to know that every part of the
planet is covered and connected.

~~~
hooper
No. If you look at the map you'll see that there's an equally sized coverage
gap at each pole. I don't know if any reliable source has stated whether they
will put any satellites in orbits that can cover the poles, but I imagine it's
a pretty low priority commercially.

There is already some polar coverage from the Iridium network, which uses
orbits with higher inclination.

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aphextron
Seems like a huge footprint for each satellite to service. Dense metro areas
are really getting the shaft here. Any data on the backhaul capacity?

~~~
wmf
Starlink just isn't for dense areas.

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lawlessone
Why is there a perfect(kinda) circle of the satellites around Antarctica and
the Arctic?

They orbit near them but somehow none go over the south or north poles?

~~~
dmckeon
Fewer potential users in the near-polar regions, so the orbits are angled &
aligned like wrapping a ball of twine, while polar coverage would require
multiple tracks in north-south orbits.

edit: more answers at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556843)

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chundicus
I could make some guesses, but can someone give me a good answer as to why
there aren't any of these satellites close to the poles?

~~~
nickik
Mainly because there are no costumers there. If you want to cover the poles,
you totally could but its just not necessary.

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hypefi
No one is worried about environmental impact? And 5G ?

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person_of_color
Do these satellites have thrusters?

~~~
m4rtink
Electric hall effect thrusters that use krypton as propelant. These give the
individual satellites a really efficient thruster with a lot of delta v. They
also use krypton instead of xenon, which everyone else uses for electric
thrusters due to it being cheaper.

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coronadisaster
I wish I could know how the position of each of them was chosen...

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RocketSyntax
no satellites over california right now

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verandaguy
Holy Kessler Syndrome, Batman!

~~~
LeoPanthera
This is specifically not a concern for Starlink, which is in an extremely low
orbit. Dead satellites (and any theoretical debris) would deorbit and burn up
in less than 5 years. End-of-life satellites are intentionally deorbited
immediately.

Additionally, the starlink satellites perform active collision avoidance.

~~~
Rebelgecko
>Additionally, the starlink satellites perform active collision avoidance.

Is that currently true, or a planned feature in the future? IIRC the whole
Aeolus kerfluffle happened because someone wasn't paying attention to their
pager.

