Starlink Satellite Size report

Starlink is a low-Earth orbit satellite cluster launched by the space service company SpaceX to provide high-speed Internet access services covering the world. In 2015, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced the launch of a space high-speed Internet project in Seattle, the Starlink Project.

With the performance far exceeding the traditional satellite Internet, and the global network not restricted by the ground infrastructure, Starlink satellites can provide high-speed Internet services. It is also possible to end the network blockade that exists today.

The purpose of the Starlink satellite project is to develop a "global satellite Internet system," which aims to provide high-speed Internet services for everyone in the world and build a communication base for deployment in the solar system, such as Mars. The following article will introduce more basics about the Starlink satellite that you are interested in.

Starlink Satellite Description

On February 22, 2018, SpaceX successfully launched a "Falcon 9" rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA, and put two small experimental communication satellites into orbit, and the Starlink project was launched. On October 22, 2019, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk successfully tweeted Starlink and said that Starlink had provided space-based Internet services.

The Starlink satellite project plans to build a giant satellite constellation of about 12,000 satellites between 2019 and 2024 to provide Internet services. Its goal is to provide services in the northern United States and Canada by 2020 and expand its service coverage worldwide by 2021.

Starlink Satellite Size Guide

On March 11, 2021, SpaceX's "Falcon 9" rocket carried a group of 60 Starlink satellites, was successfully launched in Florida, the United States. The goal of Starlink is to provide superfast global internet coverage with very low latency, even in rural or remote areas that may typically lack reliable connectivity. Traditional internet satellites struggle to provide fast coverage because many are in very high geostationary orbits—around 22,000 miles above the Earth's equator. It means data takes a relatively long time to travel between the surface and back.

• Starlink satellites are being deployed around 60 times closer to Earth than traditional satellites, which causes the Starlink satellites to be in lower latency and have the ability to support services typically not possible with traditional satellite internet.
  
• The Starlink project's initial constellation consists of 1,440 satellites, which will provide "near-global coverage of the populated world in 2021."
  
• Falcon 9 user guide estimates that the total available height for the stack of 60 satellites is 6.7m. As there are two satellites per unit of height, and there might be some spacers between them, we can estimate that the stowed height of the Starlink satellite is 20cm (8"). The Starlink satellite size is approximately 3.2x1.6x0.2m.
• According to official information from SpaceX, the weight of each Starlink satellite is 500 lbs (227 kg), which makes the total usable payload of the orbit 13,620 kg.
• The 60 satellites were stacked in the payload cover of the Falcon 9 rocket, weighing 15 tons (13,620 kg), and the Falcon 9 rocket is 229 feet (70 meters) tall.

Controversion Of The Starlink Project

On January 6, US local time, SpaceX successfully launched the 34th batch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A total of 49 "Starlink" satellites entered low-Earth orbit. Up to now, SpaceX has launched a total of 1991 "Starlink" satellites. This year, SpaceX will maintain a rapid launch rhythm to expand the "Starlink." This massive super satellite project comes from the fantasies of SpaceX CEO Musk, which has also caused a series of controversies.

The first is the anger of astronomers. Because clusters of Starlink satellites pass through the night sky, astronomical observations that require long exposures are greatly affected. The bright spots or horizontal bars on the photos of their trajectories may jeopardize the achievements of many years of academic researches.

Secondly, more and more countries have discovered that the Starlink project is essentially a "space enclosure" movement. According to the provisions of the International Telecommunication Union, satellite frequency and orbital resources are shared resources for all humanity. SpaceX's ambition to seize orbital resources is self-evident, which will reduce the number of radio frequencies and orbital positions available to everyone else.

It takes at least hours or even days for many space users to design an avoidance maneuver, which shows that space is too crowded. There is an urgent need for more coordination between countries to allocate orbit space and conduct space traffic management.