A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal

106 pointsposted 4 hours ago
by 8ig8
(npr.org)

43 Comments

ACCount37

2 hours ago

This reeks of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), and we know Starshield sats carry custom sensor payloads that normal Starlinks don't have.

Zigurd

2 hours ago

I've been a pretty harsh critic of Starlink. I don't think it's going to compete well against terrestrial wireless links, specifically 5G FWA. But if they can actually do something interesting with distributed SAR in a large constellation, that's one of those national security breakthroughs that's worth every penny.

ACCount37

an hour ago

The issue with terrestrial wireless links is that you just aren't going to cover every inch of Earth's surface with terrestrial wireless links.

At the same time: coverage comes cheap to Starlink. Which makes it perfect for serving areas no one wants to serve. Such as rural areas, anything outside the largest cities in underdeveloped countries, the open ocean, and so it goes.

Zigurd

an hour ago

Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient and shrinking TAM. The only places a terrestrial wireless provider doesn't want to serve are places that can't afford FWA even though it costs less.

pavel_lishin

25 minutes ago

> Places only Starllink can reach are an insufficient and shrinking TAM.

And yet, people live in those places, and you telling them that they're not economically worth serving isn't really solving their problem.

lokar

16 minutes ago

Pretending that they are worth economically serving with current tech or even tech that could be available soon does not help them either.

pavel_lishin

2 minutes ago

Who's pretending? If they're getting internet through Starlink, it sure sounds like they're being served.

Incipient

26 minutes ago

Starlink has plenty of good use cases: - camper van coverage across whole countries/continents - rural farms/communities - global coverage for convenience (eg business travellers) - huge military use

...just depends if it's economically viable

stuff4ben

an hour ago

> national security breakthroughs

Can you explain what you mean by this? Still not sure how SAR would fit in here...

robszumski

an hour ago

If a giant chunk of the constellation can act as a truly huge antenna, what can you get from that? Super high resolution? Seek/dwell time on a target that is effectively infinite?

mdhb

an hour ago

And we are going to put that in the hands of Elon musk? Are you fucking kidding me?

krisoft

42 minutes ago

Nobody is discussing putting anything in Elon's hand. We are discussing what he already has in his hand, or can grab for himself if he chooses to.

next_xibalba

an hour ago

Is there a viable alternative?

SpaceX is the only launch provider and satellite operator that is progressing at a rapid pace and driving costs down.

JKCalhoun

an hour ago

> Is there a viable alternative?

Always a good answer. ;-)

Zigurd

36 minutes ago

2/3 of Falcon 9 launches are for Starlink. No outside revenue. SpaceX continues to require new investment rounds. So the whole "driving costs down" thing might only work until investors expect some actual free cash flow.

There have been 11 test launches of starship. You might've missed the last one because it didn't do anything new, except shedding parts and exploding less. There's a pretty good chance that program will never beat the cost of Falcon Heavy, or that the technology, like multiple refueling flights to get beyond low Earth orbit, is ever made workable.

wongarsu

17 minutes ago

The last Starship launch was indeed unspectacular because it didn't try pushing the envelope particularly hard. The previous launches were much more precarious, with many fire balls. But I'm a strong believer in iterative development. It's bad PR when everyone can see every failed prototype, but the "design it once, simulate, and make sure the first prototype flies without issues" boxes you in to conservative design decisions.

martinky24

an hour ago

What suggests SAR over downlink...?

ls612

an hour ago

Starshield with SAR that could support a missile lock would be a completely transformative capability in any pacific war scenario.

Weeenion

2 hours ago

I'm curious if you could destroy a SpaceX Satelite with a basic laser pointers. Easily enough for normal state actors and some university or engineering lab.

You need only to track it and shoot your laser up there (its only 500km) and if it can't dissipate the energy fast enough, it would overheat.

cantor_S_drug

an hour ago

A simple way would be to send up a satellite filled with "bullets" in the orbit. At the opportune moment, the satellite will fire these bullets and they will place themselves in the paths of these satellites (no need to track and target the satellites, the satellites will fly towards the bullets as their paths are fixed), boom space debris and subsequent chain reaction.

BobbyTables2

2 hours ago

Try destroying a can of soda with a laser pointer first…

Weeenion

an hour ago

Does your laser pointer has a hard upper Watt limit?

Consumer grade / privat buyable laser can easily be bought.

And would i destroy a soda can by overheating it slowly and steadily because the can has no easy way of dissipating heat and has electronics in it which are not heat resistent?

dylan604

an hour ago

I think "destroy" gets misconstrued in people's mind as exploding as a default. Rendering useless would be another way of describing it.

Edit: what kind of laser would you be using to pull this off though? the amount of time the satellite would be visible and in range of your beam would be limited. they roughly have the same orbital period as the ISS which I've personally seen many times which is my point of reference. it's only visible for a very short time, so you'd need a very hot beam to work in that time frame. would it be effective as an additive heating. as in, would it cool off before the next time it came within range?

ACCount37

36 minutes ago

A Starlink V2 Mini sat (what they're currently launching with Falcon 9) has a total solar panel area of about 10.5 * 2.5 *2 = 105 m^2.

Solar irradiance in LEO is about 1350 W/m^2 when unobstructed. A space-grade solar panel reflects 5%-10% of that back as light, with the rest absorbed as either heat or electricity.

This should give you an idea of what kind of thermal flux the satellite is designed to be dealing with.

JKCalhoun

an hour ago

Delivering that kind of power through all of the atmosphere between you and satellite is going to be a problem. And it's not sticking around overhead waiting for you to heat it up slowly.

Razengan

an hour ago

Can I drink the soda first?

Oh come on you guys I thought this would be my ticket to 6000 :(

jmclnx

an hour ago

To me, the main issue is not the signal itself, but the direction:

>The use of those frequencies to "downlink" data runs counter to standards set by the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency

So, just another instance of the current admin violating an international treaty the US is part of.

Jtsummers

an hour ago

Plenty to criticize the admin for, but these satellites have been going up since last year. Biden was president then, not Trump. This is TLAs being TLAs. They think they are special, and they are because they get little real scrutiny, unfortunately.

JKCalhoun

an hour ago

> Starshield's unusual transmissions have the potential to interfere with other scientific and commercial satellites, warns Scott Tilley, an amateur satellite tracker in Canada who first spotted the signals.

Might that be the point? A space-based means of "hacking" satellites? Or is that kind of a dumb thing to do when you could do the same Earth-based?

ajross

2 hours ago

I'm all for a good spy story, but this seems like a big shrug to me. Interference-sensitive satellite communication is done with directional dishes, who cares what some other satellite is transmitting? That's the kind of nonsense you already engineered around.

And of course all communication managed by modern ICs is done with some kind of spread spectrum protocol with the property that "interference" is a routine/expected thing that doesn't degrade service. You can't break a modern satellite with an accidental transmission, you have to deliberately "jam" it.

Is the ITU rule in question being violated? Probably. Is that actually impactful to real systems? Almost certainly not. Old rules are old. Our goal should be to work together to update them for the benefit of all (to be sure, not to violate them with impunity!), and not to scream about them as part of a proxy war about the CEO's political and conspiracy proclivities.

iamnothere

an hour ago

(1) Some older satellites are still in use and this may affect them, especially if it becomes more common.

(2) Defending these norms is important to prevent chaos on the radio bands. If we can do this, why not China? Russia? Europe? Erosion of norms has real consequences when you are dealing with a scarce resource like RF spectrum.

ajross

an hour ago

I really think point 1 needs an example. Again, older satellites talk to dishes, not random off-axis antennas hundreds of miles away.

> Erosion of norms has real consequences when you are dealing with a scarce resource like RF spectrum.

So... no, that's wrong. Like 99% of all wireless data transferred anywhere is squeezed into a paltry 100 MHz in the 2.4 GHz ISM band, with no effective guardrails of any kind about who can use it, or with how many devices.

Technology fixed this problem, dedicated bands have little to no value anymore[1], haven't for like two decades now, and any discussion like this needs to treat with that as a prior.

Again, we all know this story isn't about rigorous adherence to international norms. It's about Musk doing shady spy stuff.

[1] Outside some otherwise important edge cases like radio astronomy which aren't "communication" as generally understood.

iamnothere

an hour ago

> dedicated bands have little to no value anymore

Citation needed. Cellular devices are an obvious application that needs dedicated spectrum allocation. Amateur bands (including volunteer civil defense helpers) and private terrestrial radio systems count on their spectrum being clean enough for use. Emergency responders have critical radio systems with dedicated frequencies. Ships and airplanes use dedicated spectrum allocations for navigation and reporting their positions, weather satellites have dedicated bands, safety equipment like avalanche beacons have dedicated frequencies, and so on.

None of this stuff would work if there were a free-for-all competition for whoever could shout the loudest on each band. To say that these bands are not important (or even critical to life safety) just because more data goes over unlicensed spectrum is frankly ignorant.

ajross

9 minutes ago

> Cellular devices are an obvious application that needs dedicated spectrum allocation.

Not since the death of TDMA, it isn't. Mobile bands are regulated to be exclusive, but nothing about LTE or 5G requires exclusive access or the absence of interference. These devices step on each others toes all the time and (via the magic of OFDMA and other dark trickery) still receive their data just fine.

You could start up a transmitter right in the middle of Verizon's or TMO's exclusive band (ICE is doing so all the time at protest sites across the country!) and the phones wouldn't bat a proverbial eyelash.

gchokov

2 hours ago

Good luck looking for answers..

iamnothere

2 hours ago

Another day, another important international agreement violated. I appreciate what SpaceX has done for global communications, but do not under any circumstances flagrantly violate ITU guidelines. This undermines critical agreements that allow us to (for instance) use the ISM and amateur bands without pervasive jamming. The ITU is not a political football like the rest of the UN, it’s a highly technical, competent organization that’s well-regarded among spectrum users.

NitpickLawyer

2 hours ago

> I appreciate what SpaceX has done for global communications, but do not under any circumstances flagrantly violate ITU guidelines.

These are Starshields, not Starlinks. These are not operated by SpaceX. In the same way Boeing isn't spying on comms by building / launching an NRO satellite.

iamnothere

2 hours ago

Good point, in that case I suppose I should direct my criticism at the NRO. They more than anyone should understand the importance of ITU treaties, as having clear standards for the RF bands probably makes their job easier in many ways.

Weeenion

2 hours ago

7 Million people benefit from it, 8 Billion people don't.

We should have done that A LOT slower without breaking shit left and right.

Edit: Because of the one downvote: It affects astronomy and a PRIVATE company has impact on a war like in ukraine. And they are violating shit just because its Musk

newsclues

an hour ago

"These are Starshields, not Starlinks."

The number of people that benefits from security provided by the military is not the same as the number of people that subscribe to starlink internet.