SpaceX COO Says Starlink is Just Five Launches Away from "Full Global Connectivity"
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:
SpaceX COO says Starlink is just five launches away from "full global connectivity":
The day before SpaceX aced its eighth Starlink launch in three months, President and COO Gwynne Shotwell implied that the company's constellation of satellites could achieve full [global] connectivity" just a handful of months from now.
Speaking at Satellite 2021's LEO Digital Forum" on April 6th, Shotwell revealed that SpaceX hopes to cross that milestone a few months after a total of 28 operational Starlink launches have been completed. Around 25 hours after her panel appearance, SpaceX launched its 490th Starlink satellite of the year, more or less wrapping up the first quarter of 2021.
[...] SpaceX's April 7th Starlink launch and booster landing was the 23rd successful launch of operational v1.0' satellites since they began flying in November 2019. All told, of the 1383 operational satellites launched by SpaceX in those 17 months, some 1369 are still in orbit, at least 1356 are functioning as expected, and more than 900 have reached their final orbits and are operational. Another 400 appear to be in long-term parking orbits dozens to hundreds of kilometers below their operational 550 km (~340 mi) ceiling, the purpose of which is unclear.
Once the 400-500 satellites now in low parking orbits reach whatever orbital parameters they're waiting on, it's unlikely to take more than two or three months for them to boost up to an operational altitude. Starlink-23 added another 60 around 250 km (155 mi).
[...] Given Shotwell's 28-launch comment and a general idea of SpaceX's 2021 launch cadence targets, it's possible to extrapolate to a reasonably accurate timeline for the constellation to reach a point of full connectivity globally" - albeit with a few caveats.
[...] In other words, barring unprecedented numbers of early satellite failures or unusually long orbit-raising periods, it's likely that SpaceX will have enough operational satellites - around 1700 - for near-total, uninterrupted Starlink coverage of the inhabited world by the end of Q3 (September) 2021.
That works out to just less than two years from Starlink's very first launch to total world coverage. Granted, this would be the minimum coverage required. Each satellite can only support so many users at one time, so SpaceX will continue launching Starlinks for quite some time to come.
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