Satellite Internet

choi

In chronological order.

(1) Taiwan to have 24-hour access to satellites this month. Taipei Times, Oct 14, 2o24
(via Eutelsat OneWeb, as Taipei was unhappy with Elon Musk, viewing him pro-China)

In mid-December, 2024, it was reported that Taiwan was negotiating with Amazon over Kuiper coverage also.


(2) Satellite internet | A Thousand Sails; China is building a system of its own to rival Elon Musk's Starlink. The Economist, Dec 14, 2024, at page 70.
https://www.economist.com/scienc ... k-system-of-its-own

Quotations starting from paragraph 2:

(a) "Starlink has been a big success in the four years since it started operations, signing up airlines, cruise ships and more than 4m individual users, and helping boost SpaceX's valuation to a reported $350bn ['reported' because SpaceX is private, does not sell stocks]. Providing snappy, high-speed internet anywhere on Earth requires enormous numbers of satellites. Starlink already has 7,000 of them in orbit. It has regulatory permission to fly up to 12,000 within the next few years, and has filed paperwork requesting as many as 42,000 in total.

(b) "The first two batches, of 18 satellites each, were launched in August and October [2024; also from Taiyuan using Long March 6A; The Dec 5, 2024 launch was the third in Qianfan]. * * * Qianfan, which is backed by Shanghai city government, appears to have beaten GuoWang [国网(星座)], a similar constellation backed by China's central government, to orbit.

"The system could help connect people in China's rural hinterland to the internet. Despite the country's rapid industrilisation, around 300m people are thought to lack regular internet access. * * *

(c) "In November, for instance, Qianfan announced a deal with the government of Brazil. Earlier in the year Mr [Elon] Musk had entered into a bitter public row with a Brazilian judge who had been investigating X, a social network that Mr Musk owns. * * *

(d) "* * * Qianfan's other use is likely to be military. * * *  

(e) "Starlink has proved its military utility in Russia's war against Ukraine * * * China's government made building a Starlink-style mega-constellation an official priority in 2020. Governments in Europe, India, Russia and Taiwan have all expressed interest in building constellations of their own.

(f) "One looming question is how quickly China can build the system * * * The country presently lacks access to reusable (and therefore much cheaper) rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9, which are used to launch Starlink satellites * * *

Note:
(a) "Qianfan, or 'SpaceSail' network"
(i) Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (TSLC)  太原卫星发射中心
(ii) Qianfan 千帆[星座] ("officially known as the Spacesail Constellation")  en.wikipedia.org for Qianfan

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​(3) European communications | Satellite Warfare; Could Europe replace Starlink if America pulls the plug? The Economist, Mar 15, 2025, at page 50.

Quote:

" * * * Last week it emerged that the European Union *EU) had approached domestic satellite operators to discuss replacing Starlink if America pulls the plug. * * *

"In any case, Europe does have alternatives. Eutelsat is a French firm that runs One Web, a direct Starlink rival, that operates in Ukraine. * * * Eutelsat;s share prce has risen five-fold since the beginning of March. Companies such as SES, based in Luxembourg, or Hispasat, a Spanish firm, also offer satellite services.

"But none can match Starlnk's price, capacity, or scale. Starlink has over 7,000 satellites in low orbit. OneWeb's fleet is less than one-tenth the size. Lluc Palerm-Serra at Analysys Mason, a consultancy, reckons Starlink can offer dozens to hundreds of times more bandwidth to Ukraine's soldiers than OneWeb could. SES and Hispasat's fleets are smaller still, and many of their satellites fly much higher, which adds delays to connections that use them.

"Mass production allows SpaceX to charge just $400 for Starlink's satellite dishes. Terminals for OneWeb can cost over $10,000. * * *

"In December the EU signed a €10.6bn contract to develop IRIS2, a Starlink-style system of 290 satellites designed for governmental and military use. (China, Russia and Taiwan are all pursuing similar systems.) But it is expensive, of modest size, and not due to be switched on until 2031 at the earliest. * * *

choi

(4)
(A) Satellite internet | Star Wars; Amazon gears up to take on SpaceX -- and China. The Economist, Apr 12, 2025, at page 60.
https://www.economist.com/busine ... ts-spacex-and-china

Quotations starting from paragraph 2:

" * * * Alongside OneWeb, a European firm, and Thousand Sals and HuoWang, a pair of Chinese satellite services currently under construction, Kuiper is the latest competitor in a fast-growing market for satellite broadband that is dominated by SpaceX's Starlink. * * *

" * * * Satellite internet has been used to provided connectivity in remote rural areas and to ships, oil rigs, aeroplanes and the like for many years. But the old way of doing it -- using a small number of big, high-flying satellites -- makes connection slow [due to longer distance] and expensive, leaving satellite broadband as an option of last resort. Kuiper plans to invert that model [following in footsteps of Starlink, of course] launching over 3,200 small, cheap satellites into orbits just 600km [373 miles] or so in altitude. That, Amazon hopes, w;; allow it to offer a service comparable to terrestrial broadband, no matter how remote the location of its customers.

" * * * The success of Starlink's service, which pioneered the small-and-low approach * * *     

" * * * SpaceX is privately owned, meaning hard numbers are scarce. But Quilty Space, a firm of analysts, predicts Starlink will have 7.6m subscribers by the end of 2025, up from 4.6m last year * * * That could bring in revenues of $12.3bn, compared with $6.6bn in 2024.

" * * * One of SpaceX's biggest advantages is that it can launch its satellites on its own rockets, which are by far the cheapest in the business. Amazon has chosen to rely mostly on other operators, which is more expensive. In 2022 the firm [Amazon] signed the biggest contract in the history of the launch industry.it bought 83 launches from ULA, Arianespace and Blue Origin, a rocket firm owned by Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder. (After a shareholder lawsuit in 2023 Amazon grudgingly bought three launches from SpaceX, too.) * * *  

"Amazon has advantages, too. SpaceX is vertically integrated in that it makes its own rockets. Amazon is integrated in the other direction [horizontal], in that it runs its own internet businesses. Connecting the unconnected should mean more customers for Amazon's e-commerce site. Analysts peculate that Amazon may bundle a Kuiper connection with its Prime subscription service * * *   

"The firm has said it will integrate Kuiper with Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud-computing arm. AWS's data centres offer ready-made ;pcatopms fpr Kuiper's ground stations * * *

" * * * In March Ontario's government cancelled a C$100m ($70m) contract with Starlink in retaliation for Mr Trump's imposition of tariffs on Canada. * * *

Note:
(a)
(i) Kuiper Systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems
("Kuiper Systems LLC, also known as Project Kuiper, is a subsidiary of Amazon that was established in 2019 to deploy a large satellite internet constellation to provide low-latency broadband connectivity.[2][3] The name Kuiper was a company codename for the project inspired by the Kuiper belt.")
(ii) Kuiper belt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt
("most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed 'ices'), such as methane, ammonia, and water. * * * The Kuiper belt is named in honor of the Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who conjectured the existence of the belt in 1951")

One may search images.google.com with Kuiper belt to have an overview of the belt.
(b) Starlink
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
("Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by Starlink Services, LLC * * * that is a wholly owned subsidiary of American aerospace company SpaceX,[5] providing coverage to around 125 countries and territories. * * * SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. As of September 2024, the constellation consists of over 7,000 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO)[9] that communicate with designated ground transceivers")
(i) Starlink Services, LLC is headquartered in 1 Rocket Road, Hawthorne, CA 90250.
(ii) "Space Exploration Technologies Corp, commonly known as SpaceX":  en.wikipedia.org for SpaceX

Hawthorne, California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne,_California
(a city on Los Angeles County; "Hawthorne was founded in 1905 * * * by real estate developers BL Harding and HD Lombard. Harding's daughter shared her birthday—July 4, American Independence Day—with New England author Nathaniel Hawthorne [born on July 4, 1804], and a decision was made to name the small village after him")
(c) "the old way of doing it -- using a small number of big, high-flying satellites"
(i) satellite Internet access
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access
("if it can sustain high speeds, it is termed satellite broadband. * * * Satellite Internet generally relies on three primary components: a satellite – historically in geostationary orbit (or GEO) but now increasingly in Low Earth orbit (LEO) or Medium Earth orbit MEO)[24] – a number of ground stations known as gateways that relay Internet data to and from the satellite via radio waves (microwave), and further ground stations to serve each subscriber, with a small antenna and transceiver. * * * Because of the satellite's geostationary orbit, the gateway antenna can stay pointed at a fixed position")
(ii) geocentric orbit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_orbit
(section 2 Types: low-earth orbit (LEO): < 2,000km + geosynchronous orbit: 35,786km)


(B) Karen Weise and Kenneth Chang, Project Kuiper Satellite Launched by Amazon; The spacecraft are the company's entry into beaming internet from Space. New York Times, A[r 30, 3025, at page A 24.

Quote:

(a) "Starlink, with thousands of satellites in orbit and more launching nearly every week * * *

(b) "The [Kuiper] satellite [sic; singular] lifted on Monday [Apr 28] at 7:01 pm Eastern time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They were carried by an Atlas V , a rocket made by United Launch Alliance * * *

"The spacecraft deployed the Kuiper satellites in a circular orbit at 280 miles above the surface. The satellites' propulsion system will then gradually raise that orbit to an altitude of 393 miles.

(c) "While Kuiper also aims for that market [of residential customers], particularly in remote areas, it will also be integrated with Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud competing offering, which is popular with large corporations and governments around the world. That ight make it more attractive to businesses that involve satellite imagery or weather forecasting that not only need [sic; hence the subject must be 'businesses' rather than 'imagery or weather forecasting'] to move large amounts of data across the internet, but also to perform calculations on the data.

"Ground stations will connect Kuiper satellites to the web services infrastructure in a manner that will also allow companies to communicate with their own remote equipment. For example, Amazon has suggested that energy companies could use Kuiper to monitor and control remote wind farms or offshore drilling platforms.

"In October 2023, two prototype Kuiper satellites were launched to test the technology. Amazon said that the tests were successful. * * *

(d) " * * *The company [Amazon] has said that it expects to connect customers to the internet later this year [via Kuiper System].

"While a fully functional constellation needs thousands of satellites, the company can offer service in specific regions with far fewer in orbit before expanding to mor global coverage later.

Note: United Launch Alliance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Launch_Alliance
(introduction; section 2 Products, section 2.2 Atlas V: "Atlas V has been ULA's primary launch vehicle for over two decades. However, the rocket is currently nearing retirement * * * The first stage, named the Common Core Booster, uses a single Russian-made RD-180 engine [which had been bought in large number and warehoused before Russia invaded Ukraine and received sanctions], fueled by kerosene and liquid oxygen")