Hacker News Reader

Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

Need third party analysis of that, personally

The search term "Gabbard diagram" should tell you all you need to know. Especially if you find some animated ones. Here's a particularly nice one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ijKirDjwOU

The Gabbard diagram is a way of expressing the orbital locations and decay of the particles produced as a result of an orbital collision. Note how higher objects tend to stay high for a long time, but low objects (below about 600km) drift lower at an appreciable timescale, and once they're below about 500km they fall the rest of the way very very quickly.

Starlink satellites deploy to 550-km orbits.

Edit: Oh, these were launched into a 210-km orbit, which combined with the higher atmospheric density due to the geomagnetic storm, basically dragged them back down before they could raise to their normal orbit. Oof.

Even more strongly, SpaceX launches to a ~200km orbit and has the satellites raise themselves. This way any satellites without attitude control deorbit immediately.

Also, the vast majority of SpaceX satellites will be at 350km.

Your numbers are a bit on the low side.

They start off at a 350 km ( https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=50803 was launched earlier this year).

They then raise them to about a 550 km orbit for its operational lifetime ( https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=45102 )

And then they lower it a bit, and it decays more rapidly ( https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=44249 )

Another one that didn't go operational - https://in-the-sky.org/spacecraft.php?id=44282 - you can see it go up, fail, get lowered, and decay.

The VLEO orbit for Gen2 is 340km, and will comprise the bulk of the satellites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#cite_note-sn20170917-...

> SpaceX has two constellation applications pending FCC approval — one for a 4,425 satellite constellation operating in Ka- and Ku-band from around 1,200 kilometers, and another for 7,518 V-band satellites flying between 335 and 345 kilometers.

I am not aware of any Starlink satellites currently in either of those two orbits.

Yes, I used future tense in my comments.

How about linking to the original source rather than a poor copy? https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ld4vlq/gabbard_diagr...

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRUaENzxH44

Analysis of what, exactly? The physics of the orbits they are in are pretty well understood. You can track the orbital altitudes (and failures/disposals) here: https://planet4589.org/space/stats/star/starstats.html

well, exactly that, to me that meant "any source aside from SpaceX" and you provided it so thanks.

Many third parties have analyzed it. FCC, Nasa, their competitors, and others.

To the people that provided third party analysis, thank you, to everyone else, be like those people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com