SpaceX’s laser system for Starlink delivers more than 42 petabytes of data per day to customers, one of the company’s engineers said today. This is 42 million GB.
NEWS: SpaceX’s Laser System for Starlink is discharging over 42 petabytes of data for customers per day, an engineer revealed today. Which translates to 42 million gigabytes.
“We’re passing over terabits per second every day across 9,000 lasers”
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) January 30, 2024
We transmit more than terabits per second [данных] through 9,000 lasers every day. We actually service all of our Starlink users via lasers at a given time within a two-hour window.
– SpaceX engineer Travis Brashear said at SPIE Photonics West, an event in San Francisco dedicated to the latest advances in optics.
While Starlink uses radio waves to deliver high-speed internet to customers, SpaceX is also equipping the satellites with a laser communications system to reduce latency and improve the system’s global coverage. The lasers can support connections at 100 Gbps per line, and are especially important for helping satellites receive data when no SpaceX ground station is nearby, such as over the ocean or Antarctica. Instead, the satellite can transmit data to and from another Starlink satellite in Earth orbit, forming a peer-to-peer network in space.
SpaceX launched the 4,000th Starlink satellite – the first Starlink v2 Mini devices with four times more bandwidth went into orbit
Brashear’s secondary report showed that the laser system is quite reliable, despite the fact that the equipment is aboard the thousands of Starlink satellites constantly orbiting the Earth. Despite the technical difficulties, the company has achieved an indicator of error-free operation of laser communication at the level of more than 99%.
Satellites are constantly forming laser lines of communication, resulting in about 266,141 “laser captures” every day. But in some cases, the connection can be maintained for weeks and even reach a data transfer speed of up to 200 Gbps.
Brashear also said that the Starlink laser system was able to connect two satellites more than 5,400 kilometers apart. The connection was so distant, he said, that it “cut through the atmosphere 30 kilometers above the Earth’s surface” before the connection was lost.
Another interesting fact: we kept in touch at an altitude of 122 kilometers during the removal of the satellite from orbit. And they were able to transmit the video.
During his presentation, Brashear also showed a slide showing how the laser system can deliver data to the Starlink dish in Antarctica in seven different ways. “We can dynamically change these routes in milliseconds. Therefore, for now we have some way to land [станции], you will have 99.99% uptime. That’s why it’s important to have as many nodes as possible,” he added.
Most of the Starlink satellites currently in orbit use Gen 3 laser communications. But the company recently upgraded the technology with a new Gen 4 model. SpaceX can produce about 200 units per week, but to keep costs down, the company uses off-the-shelf components. including sensors and actuators. SpaceX also had to make sure that all the components were “removable” and would leave no trace when the Starlink satellite went out of service and burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
In the future, SpaceX plans to expand the laser system so that it can be carried and installed on third-party satellites.
