It is not possible to talk about satellites without talking about SpaceX, the American satellite operator, and its constellation Starlink.
Starlink it is in fact the largest satellite constellation in the world. The first operational launch dates back to 2019 and today includes approximately 6.000 satellites.
The constellation uses low-altitude Earth orbit (LEO) and offers broadband Internet connection services.
If you then add that its founder is called Elon Musk...
Yet this time we have to talk about a new society, the Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), a Shanghai-based company that plans to create a satellite constellation Qianfan (or G60 Starlink).
A few days ago (6 August 2024) the first 18 satellites were put into low Earth orbit and the SSST plans to bring up to 600 into orbit by the end of 2025 to reach and exceed 12.000 in the following years.
La Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology it is just one of three Chinese companies that promise to build satellite megaconstellations in the coming years and this leads us to some considerations:
- low Earth orbit is an ideal orbit for small satellites designed to provide telecommunications services, both because they require relatively little energy to be placed and maintained in orbit, and because their proximity to the earth allows them to maintain low latency communications ;
- the orbit, precisely because of its proximity to the Earth, also presents problems, in fact it doesn't take much for a satellite to end up falling back to the Earth and in the event of accidents the same thing would happen to the debris;
- the satellites operating in this orbit have a reduced opening angle so it is necessary to have numerous satellites to ensure coverage of a large territory;
- from a geopolitical point of view it is clear that the orbit represents a valuable and limited resource, it is in fact a band of space that is between approximately 500 and 2000 kilometers from the Earth, in which the operating satellites can also be used for purposes other than telecommunications, for example for espionage, intelligence gathering and very high definition images.
From what has been said so far, it should be clear that the LEO orbit will soon become very crowded having to host tens of thousands of satellites and this could lead to the growth of conflicts between the two superpowers, without thinking about the increasingly high risks of accidents random or artificially caused.
In fact, let's remember that a satellite is a device that can be hacked and therefore used for purposes other than the original ones...
For now we can only watch and try to understand how the situation evolves.
To learn more:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/china-deploys-first-satellites-for...
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/09/china/china-satellite-qianfan-g60-sta...
https://spacenews.com/china-to-launch-first-satellites-for-megaconstella...
Photo: CNSA
