Hacker News Reader

Comment by leoh | Hacker News Reader

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Can someone furnish evidence that ordinary cell phones are actually trackable... from space? When 5g is typically 200 ft, at best ~4km; LTE being ~100km at best... and the literal record for the lowest satellite orbit (Tsubame; which merely sustained it for 7d) being 2711.5km?

Yes, sure, maybe at the obscenely low signal received in space, one could pick up some kind of signature as opposed to it being even marginally usable for tx. But to infer that some kind of high-fidelity tracking could be done with that? Come on.

View on HN

>the literal record for the lowest satellite orbit (Tsubame; which merely sustained it for 7d) being 2711.5km

Source? Wikipedia says it was 167.4 km.[0]

Heck, even the ISS is well below 2700 km. It orbits at roughly 420 km altitude.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Low_Altitude_Test_Satell...

[1] https://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx

Even with phased arrays, you think it's not possible? I didn't check link budgets on and off target or anything, just curious.

Also, the ISS orbits at ~450km, so I'm not sure where you're getting that record lowest orbit from. Microsatellites will decay pretty quickly there, but these spy satellites are typically bigger with thrusters for orbit maintenance.

Your altitudes for satellites are too high. Low earth orbit is defined as being below 2000km and very low orbit as being below 450 km. Starlink is at about 550km. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit https://ts2.space/en/what-is-the-altitude-at-which-starlink-...

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The fact that every government in the world is stumbling over themselves to become customers?

Suppose I wrote a blog post saying that the US government had invented a way to read your thoughts from a satellite — would you believe it merely because they would be a paying customer?

Remember that 5G also uses the same frequency bands that 4G does, with a slight increase in range over 4G. 5G doesn't mean short range; 5G mmwave does.

I can communicate via a satellite using my amateur radio walkie talkie using a few watts. Imagine what’s possible with nation state budgets.

Because that satellite is emitting a heck of a lot more electromagnetic radiation than your phone…

Ah yes, the fabled power of 250mw

https://www.amsat.org/two-way-satellites/so-50-satellite-inf...

No it is not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com