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Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

322 points by fredrickd 2y ago

uni_baconcat 2y ago
> Bringing internet connection to everyone on Earth is an incredibly important mission. Consider supporting this mission by joining SpaceX's Starlink team. I wish I could too.
- Inityx 2y ago
  Bringing certainly would be. Selling, however...
  - ejb999 2y ago
    Not sure I understand - you expect some one/some company to invest billions and billions of dollars to create internet access in places that where it doesn't exist and then give away the service? Who would, or could, do that?
LeoPanthera 2y ago
[flagged]
- BigJono 2y ago
  You don't need an affiliation with a company to mindlessly parrot it's marketing material.
- redserk 2y ago
  Or it could simply be a very enthusiastic fan.
  - fredrickd 2y ago
    Yep, just a fan of the mission and have some friends on the team (and needed another statistic to fill out the bottom lol).
    - redserk 2y ago
      It’s a fun site to look at! Thanks for putting together the visualization.
- UberFly 2y ago
  Creator seems to be a frenetic builder of things: https://depue.notion.site https://depue.notion.site
- hnbad 2y ago
  It's easy to forget given the direction Elon has been heading ever since the "pedo guy" comment but there are a lot of techno-optimists who are obsessively in love with all things SpaceX (and - tho now to a lesser extent - Tesla). This turf isn't astro but it's also not really turf to begin with - just a very enthusiastic singular blade of grass.
  - misiti3780 2y ago
    This is one of the dumbest takes i have seen on HN in a while.
    - jrh3 2y ago
      For real. The trolls that are so unnerved at Elon need to get out from under their bridge and enjoy some sunshine.
  - ViktorRay 2y ago
    Isn’t it against this site’s guidelines to accuse people of astroturfing?
    - hnbad 2y ago
      Okay? I literally said it's not astroturfing. Words mean things. I'd argue the lack of reading comprehension presented in the replies to my comment bords on violating the site's guidelines too. Astroturfing is when a moneyed interest group (an organisation, political candidate, corporation, activist investor, etc) creates a sockpuppet "grassroots movement", usually by creating a coordinated marketing campaign and brand identity that claims to represent an amorphous group of "concerned citizens" rather than the actual people or organizations funding these efforts. The reason there's a word for this in English is that the US has seen this a lot around propositions citizens are allowed to vote on directly, often impacting businesses or sometimes at conflict with the interests of influential religious groups. The key component here is that astroturf (derived from a brand name for artificial grass) is meant to mimick grassroots activism. Grassroots activism is called that because it is a bottom-up activist movement (hence "growing" like grass) made up of many distinct individuals (i.e. the blades of grass) acting in unison, rather than the typical top-down political movements initiated by political parties and other existing large organizations. My point is that while the site very much looks like something SpaceX would plausibly be interested in producing or funding, it's explicitly operated by one person who intentionally promotes the company to the point of advertising them as an employer by linking to their jobs page. Hence, it's a single blade of grass. It's apparently genuine not "artificial" but it's not a movement so calling it grassroots (which "it's not astroturf" would suggest) wouldn't be right either. Usually when speaking of efforts led by individuals the accusations are words like "shill", not "astroturf". And he doesn't seem to be that either. So given that the interest seems genuine, I'd suggest "cheerleader" - "fanboy" would fit but is usually used dismissively. The core here is that it's not just a satellite hobbyist who thinks Starlink is cool and did a fancy illustration, it's someone who genuinely thinks SpaceX itself is great. The reason I mention Elon Musk should be obvious given that he used to be the hype man for SpaceX (and to a lesser extent still is). He used to be so dominant in popular culture that he even cameoed in an Iron Man because people kept calling him "real life Tony Stark". The website makes sense in that context of unquestioning adoration. My point is that - arguably starting with the "pedo guy" incident - public perception of Elon Musk (and thus his companies too) has tanked since then so it might be odd to still see someone being such a dedicated fan of one of his companies they'd essentially create a marketing project for them. The replies making fun of people (including myself) for being "so consumed with hatred for Musk" make my point: in the past, Elon Musk wasn't so much hated as dismissed and the perception that mainstream opinion is unfairly hostile to him is a recent phenomenon that pretty much started around the time of the "pedo guy" incident. So to reiterate: - I didn't accuse anyone of astroturfing, I literally explained why it's not only not astroturfing but also why it's not grassroots either - I didn't say SpaceX is bad because Musk is bad, I said that the kind of enthusiasm demonstrated by that website is surprising now (hence the accusations) but that it wouldn't have been surprising a mere few years ago - You shouldn't idolize corporations because they're literally built to generate profit for themselves and any externalities that work out to your benefit are merely a nice side-effect and shouldn't be taken for granted no matter what their marketing copy or true believer employees say - Elon Musk is a terrible person and seems to work best as a hype man and ideas guy but is neither a good engineer nor a good business person; his public behavior only serves to satisfy his desperate need for personal reaffirmation and harms his companies and their mission statements more than it helps them - Starlink is a cool piece of infrastructure but it should be deeply concerning that this infrastructure is controlled by not only a for-profit company but effectively one very self-absorbed billionaire who seems to be prone to snap judgements that can literally affect state military performance (just imagine he'd be a Russian oligarch or South Korean or something if "South African / Canadian / US citizen" feels less concerning to you).
doctor_eval 2y ago
There's got to be a private jet tracking joke in here somewhere but I'm too tired to come up with it.
jsemrau 2y ago
Interesting. What library is that? Does it use propagation off from TLE data?
- Rebelgecko 2y ago
  From eyeballing the JS, it looks like it's pulling TLEs from Celestrak and doing SGP4
  - fredrickd 2y ago
    yep that's right. uses https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js.
  - jsemrau 2y ago
    Thank you!
ada1981 2y ago
It’s wild that a private company was able to take up this much orbital space / night sky and the people of the earth had no say in the matter.
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  I think you might be underestimating just how big space is.
  - slimebot80 2y ago
    An entire universe is quite different to a considerably more limited orbital space
- dathos 2y ago
  Is it though? Companies thinking about profit over everything else seems to be the status quo
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Good. They're regulated, so they meet non-profit objectives. As for the rest, you want them to chase profit, as that's a better way to pay for things than the government taking it from all of us.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  The map makes these things appear much larger than they are at scale. There is a massive amount of space out there.
  - globular-toast 2y ago
    That's what they said about IPv4 addresses. But this time there isn't even the possibility of an IPv6-like upgrade.
    - jdminhbg 2y ago
senectus1 2y ago
looks impressive... but in reality "5,601 orbiting satellites", this is nothing.. I remember seeing that their ultimate goal is in the 30,000 region. Imagine what that globe with red dots will look like then! https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html >The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted SpaceX permission to fly 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the company has filed paperwork with an international regulator to loft up to 30,000 additional spacecraft.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > I remember seeing that their ultimate goal is in the 30,000 region. When applying for permits, it makes sense to vastly overshoot your actual goal, it gives you negotiation reserves.
Klaster_1 2y ago
Wow, I knew Starlink had an enormous constellation, but visualizing it like that really empathizes the scope. Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world, without bothering about new contracts, moving cities or country borders.
- LorenDB 2y ago
  Elon has already stated that Starlink is not a replacement for a quality wired/fiber connection. His goal with Starlink is to cover areas that aren't covered by ISPs for whatever reason.
  - NikolaNovak 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - hoseja 2y ago
      Almost as if he's human. Better replace him with a bolshevik committee!
      - CooCooCaCha 2y ago
        I love how some people see holding others accountable as communism. And by love I mean it’s an incredibly stupid and toxic attitude.
      - NikolaNovak 2y ago
        What the Frick. Yes we are all human. But I think there's a massive demonstrable difference between human beings as to their consistency over time and humility In acknowledging it. To learn and to change is noble! But with some people it seems more of being fickle than actual learning and changing. The Bolshevik committee thing, I cannot even behind to parse. I think some people have such internal strong opinions and anger and constant mental fights with some perceived other devil side, that random unconnected bits just spew out occasionally into real world discussions. Are we going to add words nazi and woke and socialist to this as well? :(
jdyer9 2y ago
Similar, with a slightly different goal: https://starlink.sx/ https://starlink.sx/ It was designed more with the intent of evaluating coverage of Starlink, especially in the early days when coverage was more sparse, but it also shows the satellites in orbit. The total numbers do have a slight mismatch between the sites.
- fredrickd 2y ago
  Starlink.sx is really great and has a lot of data I haven't added yet. Working towards getting coverage hexagons + ground stations + more asap.
nomilk 2y ago
They're really moving. I watched one go from Cape York to a similar latitude as Tasmania - about 4000km - in around 23 seconds. So about 600,000km/hr; around 20x faster than ISS (28,000km/hr). I have no idea why that speed was chosen, or if other speeds would work, just found it interesting.
- modeless 2y ago
  The default visualization speed is 16x real time.
  - nomilk 2y ago
    Oh, so it is, (I see now 'live' is available by clicking on that option (top right). Thanks for the correction.
- mkl 2y ago
  For near-circular orbits like this, speed controls altitude [0] [1]. 600,000km/hr is way faster than Earth escape velocity, so anything that fast won't be orbiting Earth. [0] https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite6.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite6.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed#Tangential_velocities_at_altitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed#Tangential_veloc...
bottlepalm 2y ago
Nice. It'd be cool to filter by version. Also visualizations like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rddTXl_7Wr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rddTXl_7Wr8 are useful for getting the status of how far along each shell is to completion.
- fredrickd 2y ago
  Great suggestion. I'll add this as soon as I get the time. Being able to color code each shell would be super cool.
tanyongsheng 2y ago
Very cool! It pretty much covered the entire earth. I wonder about the connectivity and speed difference between the north poles and those in the middle. I was using it on a cruise, it is very stable.
drukenemo 2y ago
Strangely, a search for how many satellites are in orbit right now, returns those numbers: - 9,494 active satellites USA 2926 China 493 United Kingdom 450 So the 5k plus from Starlink are in this count yet?
- fredrickd 2y ago
  Yep, they should be.
- walrus01 2y ago
  United Kingdom 450 is a count not because the UK actually launches so many satellites of its own, but rather because legacy commercial telecom operators (geostationary like INMARSAT and others) are often UK incorporated. Dig deep enough into commercial satellite telecom and you'll find stuff with offices in the City of London.
  - kossTKR 2y ago
    Why did many telecom companies put their offices in the City of London? Taxes, US regulation, military shenanigans?
    - walrus01 2y ago
      Finances and investment... not so much that their corporate HQ is legally in the city of london specifically but the people arranging debt/financing to do big costly telecom projects will be adjacent to the NYC and/or London financial markets. Same reason why a lot of submarine telecom projects are closely linked to things in London. If you need to spend a ridiculous amount of money for something that has a 10, 15+ year ROI you need a massive amount of debt and that money can only come from a few sources in the English-speaking world.
renegat0x0 2y ago
There is also https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/
- plipt 2y ago
  That’s a good one Also check out https://satellitetracker3d.com/ https://satellitetracker3d.com/ For a 3d visualization of Starlink as well as many other (all other?) satellites. Be sure to zoom out
dejongh 2y ago
Wow
walrus01 2y ago
Kuiper and other proposed LEO networks have a lot of catching up to do in terms of actually sending hardware to space. There's a wikipedia page for list of starlink launches and just scrolling through it and skimming takes a considerable amount of time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshield_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshiel...
- chrisjc 2y ago
  I was about to comment in agreement while also mentioning about having a means to put the hardware up there. But then I realized that there's absolutely no reason why they couldn't just pay SpaceX to put them up there (until Blue Origin is up to the job). SpaceX has put a few Amazon payloads into orbit already. SpaceX has little reason to thwart any competition since it's just creating more demand for their services, thus in theory helping to reduce the cost of putting mass into orbit, funding future efforts and further solidifying their position as the industry leader. Not that SpaceX could/would thwart competition since it would be met with a great deal of pressure from the gov.
lom 2y ago
> The Starlink constellation could serve up to 188,160 MB/sec to Earth. Does that feel very slow to anyone else?
- k4rli 2y ago
  So 100Mbps for ~16k people. Barely useful. I can only ever see it being useful for real rural people, who don't get any 4G signal, but these people might also not want to pay the crazy subscription fees or $500+ for the equipment. I don't see any reason why anyone living in or <100km near a city would ever want this. 5G mobile can already provide 500Mbps and fiber is just unbeatable. At least the night sky was ruined for a billionaire's useless constellation.
  - beejiu 2y ago
    Nobody uses 100Mbps continuously. Not even close. Would probably average about 0.5% of that capacity. 16000/0.005 = 3.2 million customers. That's quite close to the 2.6 million they have on the page.
    - doublerabbit 2y ago
      > Nobody uses 100Mbps continuously Only because nobody can sensibility obtain 100Mbps as a connection. I'm still stuck on 2Mb ADSL. Where games are now 30-60GB in download, family streaming is a thing. This would be topped pretty easily.
      - beejiu 2y ago
        100/1024*86400/8 = 1054 GB every day You'd have to download 17 of those games every day to saturate your 100 Mbps connection. It's about 350 hours of Netflix streaming per day.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    The "crazy subscription fees" are about $40 more than the $80/month I pay for pretty modest Internet. Not everyone has great cellular service. I barely get it 50 miles west of Boston--presumably because I live at the base of a hill between myself and the tower. I routinely lose cell entirely when I take the train in through some of the highest-end suburbs in the area. Starlink really is a game-changer for people who don't have other good Internet options. And there are a lot of them even if they don't live on a montaintop in Wyoming someplace. Can everyone in rural locations afford broadband at all? No. But Starlink is actually pretty competitive with equivalent broadband offerings. I am a long way from being a Musk fanboy but Starlink is genuinely extremely useful for a lot of people.
usrusr 2y ago
Heh, to someone not overly familiar with North American geography, the clear cutoff between off-polar orbits and the few exceptions almost looks as if they decided to turn around at the Canadian border.
domh 2y ago
This is wild. I had no idea of the scope of Starlink satellites in orbit. What is the life cycle of one of these satellites? How long do they last in orbit? Can they be controlled where they crash land down? How many different versions of the satellites are in orbit? I wonder how often they have their software updated and what happens in the failure state of an unsuccessful update?
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  They have a lifespan of about 5 years, the limit is the amount of maneuvering propellant to compensate for atmospheric drag they have on board. Next gen, which will be launched by the much larger Starship, may have a lot more propellant. Most are in a five year orbit. This means that if SpaceX loses control of the satellite it will deorbit in five years due to atmospheric drag. Under control they deorbit within hours. They plan on switching to a one year orbit in the future. They have purposefully deorbitted hundreds of satellites. They had a couple of early satellites deorbit naturally without control, but all starlinks currently orbiting are under control. Starlinks are designed to burn up in atmosphere. On deorbit they do not reach the Earth. I imagine Starlinks are like other Musk products and get updates multiple times per month, but that's a guess.
  - domh 2y ago
    Thank you! This is very interesting to read. I'll have to do some more research myself.
  - typon 2y ago
    If they send them farther out does that increase their lifespan due to thinner atmosphere? Why target 1 year instead of five year?
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Yes, higher orbits would have increased lifespan, a little bit longer for satellites under control and likely decades longer for satellites out of control. I think the primary motivation for lower orbits would be compatibility with cellular telephones. While they have gotten it to work at current altitudes, it must be a lot easier at lower ones. Other reasons could be decreased latency, less overlap/interference between coverage areas, reduced chance of Kessler syndrome, decreased power usage for transmission & reception.
inemesitaffia 2y ago
Just use Starlink.sx
lawrenceyan 2y ago
The first 60 Starlink satellites launched in May of 2019[0]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riBaVeDTEWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riBaVeDTEWI
ryukoposting 2y ago
Maps like these are really useful for folks developing satcom firmware. I use https://iridiumwhere.com https://iridiumwhere.com at least a couple times a week to help me test code. This one is particularly interesting for the sheer density of it - that's a TON of satellites. On a related note, anyone who hasn't done so should get to their country's lowest light-pollution area and do some star gazing (for Americans, I suggest Badlands National Park). With constellations like Starlink, we won't have those kinds of night skies for much longer.
- oceanplexian 2y ago
  I live in a dark skies area in the Southwest USA. I frequently see the trains as they are inserted into orbit, but your chance of seeing an individual Starlink satellite is zero. It's like trying to see a single object the size of a picnic table, in the dark, 400km away, going 27,000km/hr.
  - doctoboggan 2y ago
    This is totally incorrect, what do you think you are seeing in the trains? You can easily see each individual satellite. Just after sunset you can see many individual satellites, not just starlink.
    - 1123581321 2y ago
      Starlink reduces reflectivity with shielding once the satellites are in orbit. That’s why you only see the trails on their way to insertion. Without the shield, you’re right that the satellites would be visible post insertion.
      - BenjiWiebe 2y ago
        Starlink satellites are visible with a 20x80 binoculars, shortly after sunset, in the west. Later they aren't visible at all. I do a little stargazing with binoculars.
      - 2y ago
tasuki 2y ago
Why is there such a sudden drop off in satellite density over 53°N ?
- mh- 2y ago
  Canadian customs.
- supertrope 2y ago
  Satellites launched in a polar orbit only cover polar areas. It's more cost effective to design orbits with more area and customers under them.
  - GuB-42 2y ago
    Polar orbits cover the entire Earth, like all other low orbits, in fact, they cover more than any other orbit. And there are people up there: all of Northern Europe and Alaska, and most of the UK, Russia and Canada. I am sure there is a good reason, but it surprised me too. I expected more polar orbits, like Iridium.
    - ianburrell 2y ago
      Most of the population lives below 53 deg. It makes sense to put the satellites there instead of having them bunch up near the poles. They also have 70 deg planes that cover most population centers. In future, they are planning planes at 42 and 48 deg that can better cover lower latitudes.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
danpalmer 2y ago
> not optimized for mobile use... is best enjoyed on a desktop > Please rotate your device to landscape for the optimal satellite viewing experience. Ummm...
- kjhughes 2y ago
  They seem to be merely detecting the aspect ratio of the browser window, and their message is equating portrait to mobile, even on the desktop. When I made my desktop browser window wider than tall, it got past that imperfect check they're using.
  - danpalmer 2y ago
    Yes they are, I just found it an amusing juxtaposition. Also perhaps a little unforgiving, given that I had a roughly square viewport which was definitely not a problem.
mattmaroon 2y ago
[flagged]
aaronax 2y ago
I prefer https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/ You can see the base station locations there, which is helpful in visualizing how the system works in various locales.
globular-toast 2y ago
The globe is almost invisible. Very hard to make out land. I was going to say I guess I'm happy they respected my dark mode preference, but this seems to be how it looks regardless of preference.
ddp26 2y ago
Striking visualization, makes me wonder: can this density of satellite coverage meaningfully change how earth appears to an alien civilization many lightyears away, in a way that coverage by 1% or 10% as many satellites over the last ~50 years would not?
- BHSPitMonkey 2y ago
  I know the dots seem large in the visualization, but these satellites are approximately the size of cars. They're specks of dust at this scale.
- jessriedel 2y ago
  No. There are over a billion road vehicles on Earth, but they do not change how the Earth appears from space (even accounting for the fact that ~half are blocked by clouds at any given time). A few tens of thousands of Starlink satellites will not change the Earth's visual appearance.
layer8 2y ago
It would be nice if the globe didn’t rotate by itself, or at least would only make one rotation per 24 hours. When looking at the movements in a particular area, it’s annoying that the area is always slowly rotating away.
TimMeade 2y ago
I want a realtime version of this for my lockscreen! Very impressive.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
  Seconded. If the author consider adding an option, they may get some additional stream of income:D
guluarte 2y ago
Even when I dont like Musk he did what Google tried for years
- tills13 2y ago
  He's a good example of how an awful person with awful opinions can still somehow do cool stuff. Really, he's just surrounding himself with great people, clearly.
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  Google paid for it
jjwiseman 2y ago
I made a version of whatsoverhead.com but for satellites: You could ask it, "Hey, Siri, what's overhead…in space?" and it would tell you what the nearest satellite to you was. It was an attempt to help situate yourself in the invisible world of spacecraft flying overhead all the time. The thing is, 70-90% of the time the answer is "STARLINK-1234". It was shocking to me. The app achieved the goal I intended, and the answer was a surprise–it was a more visceral way of understanding the fact that there are a lot of Starlink satellites, for sure.
- Fatnino 2y ago
  Part of that is because starlink shells are lower down than many other satellites. You are never going to have a GPS satellite or a GEO stationary one be the nearest to you because there is always going to be lower satellites nearer.
  - jjwiseman 2y ago
    Yes, I eventually had it give answers for each of LEO, MEO, and GEO just because it got extremely boring having "STARLINK" almost always be the answer.
- jerbear4328 2y ago
  Wow, that's really cool, could you share it? I would use that all the time.
jcims 2y ago
When I fullscreen this page the globe is 870 pixels wide, equating to about 9.1 miles per pixel. Each satellite is represented by a cube 3 dots on edge. This equates to 27 miles per edge or 19,683 cubic miles of volume for each square represented. That's approximately four times the total volume of the Great Lakes in the US.
- buffington 2y ago
  And if the satellites were represented as panda bear emojis?
mewse-hn 2y ago
I've been confused why our Starlink coverage is so good in rural Manitoba, Canada. On HN and elsewhere I heard complaining from Americans about how the service is over-subscribed and over-saturated, but everyone I talk to here raves about the service. I assumed we simply had less subscribers. This visualization has revealed another reason to me: the satellites hit the northern extent of their orbit and dwell over our province. Who knew orbital mechanics would work out in our favour.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  I don't quite understand your second reason. Could you elaborate what you mean by "dwell over our province" which would explain improved coverage beyond the fact that there are as you said probably fewer subscribers the satellites are visible from?
  - coryrc 2y ago
    I think you misinterpreted. Parent poster probably was thinking "fewer subscribers per Earth sq km", but mostly it turns out to be "more satellites per sq km".
  - daemonologist 2y ago
    Starlink has a lot of (most?) satellites at an orbital inclination of 53 degrees to avoid "wasting" time over the poles where few people live while still providing coverage at most other latitudes. This means that at any time there's a higher density of satellites above that latitude than at the equator. Here's a map of the ISS orbit (similar inclination) over time which shows the effect: https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/iss/iss3.png https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/iss/iss3.png
    - barbazoo 2y ago
      That was very helpful. Clicking on a few satellites and looking at their orbit confirms that. The majority do not go over the poles. Interesting that this also leaves northern Canada, Denmark and Scandinavia with what looks like not much coverage but at the same time there's coverage offered [0] in all those regions. [0] https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/map
tills13 2y ago
This is really cool but what's with the borderline propaganda in the sidebar interlaced with the data?
- nameless912 2y ago
  Agreed. Internet to the whole world is a noble goal, but the internet provider in chief is, in my estimation, a ghoul. The gushing praise is a strange choice to be sure, considering how informative the rest of the site is.
  - jessriedel 2y ago
    The gushy-ness of the webpage is weird, but note it does not mention Musk at all. It only discusses Starlink and SpaceX.
    - tills13 2y ago
      It is imo even more cringe to be so overtly gushy about a corporation.
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        Linking to the jobs page of a company you don't work for is quite strange, yes.
ck2 2y ago
What happens when there are half a dozen startups with 42,000 satellites around earth?
- zachmu 2y ago
  Lots of space up there, no pun intended.
- daemonologist 2y ago
  I don't think startups will be able to enter this market, at least not any time soon - it's too capital intensive. We might get several large "constellations" someday though (Starlink, Eutelsat/OneWeb, Amazon Kuiper, Guowang).
zachmu 2y ago
This map gives the odd sense that the sky is absolutely buzzing with satellites and yet they are still incredibly sparse "on the ground". Look at any western US state and you'll see just a handful above at any time.
rightbyte 2y ago
Does Starlink work in Norway or Alaska? I would never have guessed Starlink had this many satellites.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  Yes. But there are much less of the sats. There is basically a line at a certain latitude where the density of population is highest. So must sats circle between between that area. But to cover the things further north (or south) respectively, SpaceX also has sats in polar orbit. Those allow for coverage from the poles to the max latitude.
DarmokJalad1701 2y ago
> The last Starlink mission launched > 1 days, 17 hours, 0 mins, 21 sec ago. > The next Starlink mission launches in > 51 minutes, 19 seconds. > Over the last 365 days, Starlink launches every > 5.14 days on average. Insane launch cadence on display. And it is only going to get better.
stevecalifornia 2y ago
This can't be an accurate realt-time map. The satellites are travelling way, way too fast. This map shows a satellite travelling from LA to Denver in 10 seconds. You can literally see the satellites at night and they do not traverse horizon to horizon 1/10th as fast as depicted here.
- slater 2y ago
  By default, it's set at 16x speed (top-right on desktop)
weberer 2y ago
It looks just like that one scene in End of Evangelion.
neonihil 2y ago
This one has been around for ages, and it does work on mobile too. https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/

322 points by fredrickd 2y ago

> Bringing internet connection to everyone on Earth is an incredibly important mission. Consider supporting this mission by joining SpaceX's Starlink team. I wish I could too.

Inityx 2y ago
Bringing certainly would be. Selling, however...
- ejb999 2y ago
  Not sure I understand - you expect some one/some company to invest billions and billions of dollars to create internet access in places that where it doesn't exist and then give away the service? Who would, or could, do that?

LeoPanthera 2y ago

[flagged]

BigJono 2y ago
You don't need an affiliation with a company to mindlessly parrot it's marketing material.
redserk 2y ago
Or it could simply be a very enthusiastic fan.
- fredrickd 2y ago
  Yep, just a fan of the mission and have some friends on the team (and needed another statistic to fill out the bottom lol).
  - redserk 2y ago
    It’s a fun site to look at! Thanks for putting together the visualization.
UberFly 2y ago
Creator seems to be a frenetic builder of things: https://depue.notion.site https://depue.notion.site
hnbad 2y ago
It's easy to forget given the direction Elon has been heading ever since the "pedo guy" comment but there are a lot of techno-optimists who are obsessively in love with all things SpaceX (and - tho now to a lesser extent - Tesla). This turf isn't astro but it's also not really turf to begin with - just a very enthusiastic singular blade of grass.
- misiti3780 2y ago
  This is one of the dumbest takes i have seen on HN in a while.
  - jrh3 2y ago
    For real. The trolls that are so unnerved at Elon need to get out from under their bridge and enjoy some sunshine.
- ViktorRay 2y ago
  Isn’t it against this site’s guidelines to accuse people of astroturfing?
  - hnbad 2y ago
    Okay? I literally said it's not astroturfing. Words mean things. I'd argue the lack of reading comprehension presented in the replies to my comment bords on violating the site's guidelines too. Astroturfing is when a moneyed interest group (an organisation, political candidate, corporation, activist investor, etc) creates a sockpuppet "grassroots movement", usually by creating a coordinated marketing campaign and brand identity that claims to represent an amorphous group of "concerned citizens" rather than the actual people or organizations funding these efforts. The reason there's a word for this in English is that the US has seen this a lot around propositions citizens are allowed to vote on directly, often impacting businesses or sometimes at conflict with the interests of influential religious groups. The key component here is that astroturf (derived from a brand name for artificial grass) is meant to mimick grassroots activism. Grassroots activism is called that because it is a bottom-up activist movement (hence "growing" like grass) made up of many distinct individuals (i.e. the blades of grass) acting in unison, rather than the typical top-down political movements initiated by political parties and other existing large organizations. My point is that while the site very much looks like something SpaceX would plausibly be interested in producing or funding, it's explicitly operated by one person who intentionally promotes the company to the point of advertising them as an employer by linking to their jobs page. Hence, it's a single blade of grass. It's apparently genuine not "artificial" but it's not a movement so calling it grassroots (which "it's not astroturf" would suggest) wouldn't be right either. Usually when speaking of efforts led by individuals the accusations are words like "shill", not "astroturf". And he doesn't seem to be that either. So given that the interest seems genuine, I'd suggest "cheerleader" - "fanboy" would fit but is usually used dismissively. The core here is that it's not just a satellite hobbyist who thinks Starlink is cool and did a fancy illustration, it's someone who genuinely thinks SpaceX itself is great. The reason I mention Elon Musk should be obvious given that he used to be the hype man for SpaceX (and to a lesser extent still is). He used to be so dominant in popular culture that he even cameoed in an Iron Man because people kept calling him "real life Tony Stark". The website makes sense in that context of unquestioning adoration. My point is that - arguably starting with the "pedo guy" incident - public perception of Elon Musk (and thus his companies too) has tanked since then so it might be odd to still see someone being such a dedicated fan of one of his companies they'd essentially create a marketing project for them. The replies making fun of people (including myself) for being "so consumed with hatred for Musk" make my point: in the past, Elon Musk wasn't so much hated as dismissed and the perception that mainstream opinion is unfairly hostile to him is a recent phenomenon that pretty much started around the time of the "pedo guy" incident. So to reiterate: - I didn't accuse anyone of astroturfing, I literally explained why it's not only not astroturfing but also why it's not grassroots either - I didn't say SpaceX is bad because Musk is bad, I said that the kind of enthusiasm demonstrated by that website is surprising now (hence the accusations) but that it wouldn't have been surprising a mere few years ago - You shouldn't idolize corporations because they're literally built to generate profit for themselves and any externalities that work out to your benefit are merely a nice side-effect and shouldn't be taken for granted no matter what their marketing copy or true believer employees say - Elon Musk is a terrible person and seems to work best as a hype man and ideas guy but is neither a good engineer nor a good business person; his public behavior only serves to satisfy his desperate need for personal reaffirmation and harms his companies and their mission statements more than it helps them - Starlink is a cool piece of infrastructure but it should be deeply concerning that this infrastructure is controlled by not only a for-profit company but effectively one very self-absorbed billionaire who seems to be prone to snap judgements that can literally affect state military performance (just imagine he'd be a Russian oligarch or South Korean or something if "South African / Canadian / US citizen" feels less concerning to you).

doctor_eval 2y ago

There's got to be a private jet tracking joke in here somewhere but I'm too tired to come up with it.

jsemrau 2y ago

Interesting. What library is that? Does it use propagation off from TLE data?

Rebelgecko 2y ago
From eyeballing the JS, it looks like it's pulling TLEs from Celestrak and doing SGP4
- fredrickd 2y ago
  yep that's right. uses https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js https://github.com/shashwatak/satellite-js.
- jsemrau 2y ago
  Thank you!

ada1981 2y ago

It’s wild that a private company was able to take up this much orbital space / night sky and the people of the earth had no say in the matter.

inhumantsar 2y ago
I think you might be underestimating just how big space is.
- slimebot80 2y ago
  An entire universe is quite different to a considerably more limited orbital space
dathos 2y ago
Is it though? Companies thinking about profit over everything else seems to be the status quo
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Good. They're regulated, so they meet non-profit objectives. As for the rest, you want them to chase profit, as that's a better way to pay for things than the government taking it from all of us.
chrisco255 2y ago
The map makes these things appear much larger than they are at scale. There is a massive amount of space out there.
- globular-toast 2y ago
  That's what they said about IPv4 addresses. But this time there isn't even the possibility of an IPv6-like upgrade.
  - jdminhbg 2y ago

senectus1 2y ago

looks impressive... but in reality "5,601 orbiting satellites", this is nothing.. I remember seeing that their ultimate goal is in the 30,000 region. Imagine what that globe with red dots will look like then! https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html >The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted SpaceX permission to fly 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the company has filed paperwork with an international regulator to loft up to 30,000 additional spacecraft.

mschuster91 2y ago
> I remember seeing that their ultimate goal is in the 30,000 region. When applying for permits, it makes sense to vastly overshoot your actual goal, it gives you negotiation reserves.

Klaster_1 2y ago

Wow, I knew Starlink had an enormous constellation, but visualizing it like that really empathizes the scope. Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world, without bothering about new contracts, moving cities or country borders.

LorenDB 2y ago
Elon has already stated that Starlink is not a replacement for a quality wired/fiber connection. His goal with Starlink is to cover areas that aren't covered by ISPs for whatever reason.
- NikolaNovak 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - hoseja 2y ago
    Almost as if he's human. Better replace him with a bolshevik committee!
    - CooCooCaCha 2y ago
      I love how some people see holding others accountable as communism. And by love I mean it’s an incredibly stupid and toxic attitude.
    - NikolaNovak 2y ago
      What the Frick. Yes we are all human. But I think there's a massive demonstrable difference between human beings as to their consistency over time and humility In acknowledging it. To learn and to change is noble! But with some people it seems more of being fickle than actual learning and changing. The Bolshevik committee thing, I cannot even behind to parse. I think some people have such internal strong opinions and anger and constant mental fights with some perceived other devil side, that random unconnected bits just spew out occasionally into real world discussions. Are we going to add words nazi and woke and socialist to this as well? :(

jdyer9 2y ago

Similar, with a slightly different goal: https://starlink.sx/ https://starlink.sx/ It was designed more with the intent of evaluating coverage of Starlink, especially in the early days when coverage was more sparse, but it also shows the satellites in orbit. The total numbers do have a slight mismatch between the sites.

fredrickd 2y ago
Starlink.sx is really great and has a lot of data I haven't added yet. Working towards getting coverage hexagons + ground stations + more asap.

nomilk 2y ago

They're really moving. I watched one go from Cape York to a similar latitude as Tasmania - about 4000km - in around 23 seconds. So about 600,000km/hr; around 20x faster than ISS (28,000km/hr). I have no idea why that speed was chosen, or if other speeds would work, just found it interesting.

modeless 2y ago
The default visualization speed is 16x real time.
- nomilk 2y ago
  Oh, so it is, (I see now 'live' is available by clicking on that option (top right). Thanks for the correction.
mkl 2y ago
For near-circular orbits like this, speed controls altitude [0] [1]. 600,000km/hr is way faster than Earth escape velocity, so anything that fast won't be orbiting Earth. [0] https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite6.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite6.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed#Tangential_velocities_at_altitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed#Tangential_veloc...

bottlepalm 2y ago

Nice. It'd be cool to filter by version. Also visualizations like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rddTXl_7Wr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rddTXl_7Wr8 are useful for getting the status of how far along each shell is to completion.

fredrickd 2y ago
Great suggestion. I'll add this as soon as I get the time. Being able to color code each shell would be super cool.

tanyongsheng 2y ago

Very cool! It pretty much covered the entire earth. I wonder about the connectivity and speed difference between the north poles and those in the middle. I was using it on a cruise, it is very stable.

drukenemo 2y ago

Strangely, a search for how many satellites are in orbit right now, returns those numbers: - 9,494 active satellites USA 2926 China 493 United Kingdom 450 So the 5k plus from Starlink are in this count yet?

fredrickd 2y ago
Yep, they should be.
walrus01 2y ago
United Kingdom 450 is a count not because the UK actually launches so many satellites of its own, but rather because legacy commercial telecom operators (geostationary like INMARSAT and others) are often UK incorporated. Dig deep enough into commercial satellite telecom and you'll find stuff with offices in the City of London.
- kossTKR 2y ago
  Why did many telecom companies put their offices in the City of London? Taxes, US regulation, military shenanigans?
  - walrus01 2y ago
    Finances and investment... not so much that their corporate HQ is legally in the city of london specifically but the people arranging debt/financing to do big costly telecom projects will be adjacent to the NYC and/or London financial markets. Same reason why a lot of submarine telecom projects are closely linked to things in London. If you need to spend a ridiculous amount of money for something that has a 10, 15+ year ROI you need a massive amount of debt and that money can only come from a few sources in the English-speaking world.

renegat0x0 2y ago

There is also https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/

plipt 2y ago
That’s a good one Also check out https://satellitetracker3d.com/ https://satellitetracker3d.com/ For a 3d visualization of Starlink as well as many other (all other?) satellites. Be sure to zoom out

dejongh 2y ago

Wow

walrus01 2y ago

Kuiper and other proposed LEO networks have a lot of catching up to do in terms of actually sending hardware to space. There's a wikipedia page for list of starlink launches and just scrolling through it and skimming takes a considerable amount of time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshield_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshiel...

chrisjc 2y ago
I was about to comment in agreement while also mentioning about having a means to put the hardware up there. But then I realized that there's absolutely no reason why they couldn't just pay SpaceX to put them up there (until Blue Origin is up to the job). SpaceX has put a few Amazon payloads into orbit already. SpaceX has little reason to thwart any competition since it's just creating more demand for their services, thus in theory helping to reduce the cost of putting mass into orbit, funding future efforts and further solidifying their position as the industry leader. Not that SpaceX could/would thwart competition since it would be met with a great deal of pressure from the gov.

lom 2y ago

> The Starlink constellation could serve up to 188,160 MB/sec to Earth. Does that feel very slow to anyone else?

k4rli 2y ago
So 100Mbps for ~16k people. Barely useful. I can only ever see it being useful for real rural people, who don't get any 4G signal, but these people might also not want to pay the crazy subscription fees or $500+ for the equipment. I don't see any reason why anyone living in or <100km near a city would ever want this. 5G mobile can already provide 500Mbps and fiber is just unbeatable. At least the night sky was ruined for a billionaire's useless constellation.
- beejiu 2y ago
  Nobody uses 100Mbps continuously. Not even close. Would probably average about 0.5% of that capacity. 16000/0.005 = 3.2 million customers. That's quite close to the 2.6 million they have on the page.
  - doublerabbit 2y ago
    > Nobody uses 100Mbps continuously Only because nobody can sensibility obtain 100Mbps as a connection. I'm still stuck on 2Mb ADSL. Where games are now 30-60GB in download, family streaming is a thing. This would be topped pretty easily.
    - beejiu 2y ago
      100/1024*86400/8 = 1054 GB every day You'd have to download 17 of those games every day to saturate your 100 Mbps connection. It's about 350 hours of Netflix streaming per day.
- ghaff 2y ago
  The "crazy subscription fees" are about $40 more than the $80/month I pay for pretty modest Internet. Not everyone has great cellular service. I barely get it 50 miles west of Boston--presumably because I live at the base of a hill between myself and the tower. I routinely lose cell entirely when I take the train in through some of the highest-end suburbs in the area. Starlink really is a game-changer for people who don't have other good Internet options. And there are a lot of them even if they don't live on a montaintop in Wyoming someplace. Can everyone in rural locations afford broadband at all? No. But Starlink is actually pretty competitive with equivalent broadband offerings. I am a long way from being a Musk fanboy but Starlink is genuinely extremely useful for a lot of people.

usrusr 2y ago

Heh, to someone not overly familiar with North American geography, the clear cutoff between off-polar orbits and the few exceptions almost looks as if they decided to turn around at the Canadian border.

domh 2y ago

This is wild. I had no idea of the scope of Starlink satellites in orbit. What is the life cycle of one of these satellites? How long do they last in orbit? Can they be controlled where they crash land down? How many different versions of the satellites are in orbit? I wonder how often they have their software updated and what happens in the failure state of an unsuccessful update?

bryanlarsen 2y ago
They have a lifespan of about 5 years, the limit is the amount of maneuvering propellant to compensate for atmospheric drag they have on board. Next gen, which will be launched by the much larger Starship, may have a lot more propellant. Most are in a five year orbit. This means that if SpaceX loses control of the satellite it will deorbit in five years due to atmospheric drag. Under control they deorbit within hours. They plan on switching to a one year orbit in the future. They have purposefully deorbitted hundreds of satellites. They had a couple of early satellites deorbit naturally without control, but all starlinks currently orbiting are under control. Starlinks are designed to burn up in atmosphere. On deorbit they do not reach the Earth. I imagine Starlinks are like other Musk products and get updates multiple times per month, but that's a guess.
- domh 2y ago
  Thank you! This is very interesting to read. I'll have to do some more research myself.
- typon 2y ago
  If they send them farther out does that increase their lifespan due to thinner atmosphere? Why target 1 year instead of five year?
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Yes, higher orbits would have increased lifespan, a little bit longer for satellites under control and likely decades longer for satellites out of control. I think the primary motivation for lower orbits would be compatibility with cellular telephones. While they have gotten it to work at current altitudes, it must be a lot easier at lower ones. Other reasons could be decreased latency, less overlap/interference between coverage areas, reduced chance of Kessler syndrome, decreased power usage for transmission & reception.

inemesitaffia 2y ago

Just use Starlink.sx

lawrenceyan 2y ago

The first 60 Starlink satellites launched in May of 2019[0]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riBaVeDTEWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riBaVeDTEWI

ryukoposting 2y ago

Maps like these are really useful for folks developing satcom firmware. I use https://iridiumwhere.com https://iridiumwhere.com at least a couple times a week to help me test code. This one is particularly interesting for the sheer density of it - that's a TON of satellites. On a related note, anyone who hasn't done so should get to their country's lowest light-pollution area and do some star gazing (for Americans, I suggest Badlands National Park). With constellations like Starlink, we won't have those kinds of night skies for much longer.

oceanplexian 2y ago
I live in a dark skies area in the Southwest USA. I frequently see the trains as they are inserted into orbit, but your chance of seeing an individual Starlink satellite is zero. It's like trying to see a single object the size of a picnic table, in the dark, 400km away, going 27,000km/hr.
- doctoboggan 2y ago
  This is totally incorrect, what do you think you are seeing in the trains? You can easily see each individual satellite. Just after sunset you can see many individual satellites, not just starlink.
  - 1123581321 2y ago
    Starlink reduces reflectivity with shielding once the satellites are in orbit. That’s why you only see the trails on their way to insertion. Without the shield, you’re right that the satellites would be visible post insertion.
    - BenjiWiebe 2y ago
      Starlink satellites are visible with a 20x80 binoculars, shortly after sunset, in the west. Later they aren't visible at all. I do a little stargazing with binoculars.
    - 2y ago

tasuki 2y ago

Why is there such a sudden drop off in satellite density over 53°N ?

mh- 2y ago
Canadian customs.
supertrope 2y ago
Satellites launched in a polar orbit only cover polar areas. It's more cost effective to design orbits with more area and customers under them.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  Polar orbits cover the entire Earth, like all other low orbits, in fact, they cover more than any other orbit. And there are people up there: all of Northern Europe and Alaska, and most of the UK, Russia and Canada. I am sure there is a good reason, but it surprised me too. I expected more polar orbits, like Iridium.
  - ianburrell 2y ago
    Most of the population lives below 53 deg. It makes sense to put the satellites there instead of having them bunch up near the poles. They also have 70 deg planes that cover most population centers. In future, they are planning planes at 42 and 48 deg that can better cover lower latitudes.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

danpalmer 2y ago

> not optimized for mobile use... is best enjoyed on a desktop > Please rotate your device to landscape for the optimal satellite viewing experience. Ummm...

kjhughes 2y ago
They seem to be merely detecting the aspect ratio of the browser window, and their message is equating portrait to mobile, even on the desktop. When I made my desktop browser window wider than tall, it got past that imperfect check they're using.
- danpalmer 2y ago
  Yes they are, I just found it an amusing juxtaposition. Also perhaps a little unforgiving, given that I had a roughly square viewport which was definitely not a problem.

mattmaroon 2y ago

[flagged]

aaronax 2y ago

I prefer https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/ You can see the base station locations there, which is helpful in visualizing how the system works in various locales.

globular-toast 2y ago

The globe is almost invisible. Very hard to make out land. I was going to say I guess I'm happy they respected my dark mode preference, but this seems to be how it looks regardless of preference.

ddp26 2y ago

Striking visualization, makes me wonder: can this density of satellite coverage meaningfully change how earth appears to an alien civilization many lightyears away, in a way that coverage by 1% or 10% as many satellites over the last ~50 years would not?

BHSPitMonkey 2y ago
I know the dots seem large in the visualization, but these satellites are approximately the size of cars. They're specks of dust at this scale.
jessriedel 2y ago
No. There are over a billion road vehicles on Earth, but they do not change how the Earth appears from space (even accounting for the fact that ~half are blocked by clouds at any given time). A few tens of thousands of Starlink satellites will not change the Earth's visual appearance.

layer8 2y ago

It would be nice if the globe didn’t rotate by itself, or at least would only make one rotation per 24 hours. When looking at the movements in a particular area, it’s annoying that the area is always slowly rotating away.

TimMeade 2y ago

I want a realtime version of this for my lockscreen! Very impressive.

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
Seconded. If the author consider adding an option, they may get some additional stream of income:D

guluarte 2y ago

Even when I dont like Musk he did what Google tried for years

tills13 2y ago
He's a good example of how an awful person with awful opinions can still somehow do cool stuff. Really, he's just surrounding himself with great people, clearly.
inemesitaffia 2y ago
Google paid for it

jjwiseman 2y ago

I made a version of whatsoverhead.com but for satellites: You could ask it, "Hey, Siri, what's overhead…in space?" and it would tell you what the nearest satellite to you was. It was an attempt to help situate yourself in the invisible world of spacecraft flying overhead all the time. The thing is, 70-90% of the time the answer is "STARLINK-1234". It was shocking to me. The app achieved the goal I intended, and the answer was a surprise–it was a more visceral way of understanding the fact that there are a lot of Starlink satellites, for sure.

Fatnino 2y ago
Part of that is because starlink shells are lower down than many other satellites. You are never going to have a GPS satellite or a GEO stationary one be the nearest to you because there is always going to be lower satellites nearer.
- jjwiseman 2y ago
  Yes, I eventually had it give answers for each of LEO, MEO, and GEO just because it got extremely boring having "STARLINK" almost always be the answer.
jerbear4328 2y ago
Wow, that's really cool, could you share it? I would use that all the time.

jcims 2y ago

When I fullscreen this page the globe is 870 pixels wide, equating to about 9.1 miles per pixel. Each satellite is represented by a cube 3 dots on edge. This equates to 27 miles per edge or 19,683 cubic miles of volume for each square represented. That's approximately four times the total volume of the Great Lakes in the US.

buffington 2y ago
And if the satellites were represented as panda bear emojis?

mewse-hn 2y ago

I've been confused why our Starlink coverage is so good in rural Manitoba, Canada. On HN and elsewhere I heard complaining from Americans about how the service is over-subscribed and over-saturated, but everyone I talk to here raves about the service. I assumed we simply had less subscribers. This visualization has revealed another reason to me: the satellites hit the northern extent of their orbit and dwell over our province. Who knew orbital mechanics would work out in our favour.

barbazoo 2y ago
I don't quite understand your second reason. Could you elaborate what you mean by "dwell over our province" which would explain improved coverage beyond the fact that there are as you said probably fewer subscribers the satellites are visible from?
- coryrc 2y ago
  I think you misinterpreted. Parent poster probably was thinking "fewer subscribers per Earth sq km", but mostly it turns out to be "more satellites per sq km".
- daemonologist 2y ago
  Starlink has a lot of (most?) satellites at an orbital inclination of 53 degrees to avoid "wasting" time over the poles where few people live while still providing coverage at most other latitudes. This means that at any time there's a higher density of satellites above that latitude than at the equator. Here's a map of the ISS orbit (similar inclination) over time which shows the effect: https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/iss/iss3.png https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/iss/iss3.png
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    That was very helpful. Clicking on a few satellites and looking at their orbit confirms that. The majority do not go over the poles. Interesting that this also leaves northern Canada, Denmark and Scandinavia with what looks like not much coverage but at the same time there's coverage offered [0] in all those regions. [0] https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/map

tills13 2y ago

This is really cool but what's with the borderline propaganda in the sidebar interlaced with the data?

nameless912 2y ago
Agreed. Internet to the whole world is a noble goal, but the internet provider in chief is, in my estimation, a ghoul. The gushing praise is a strange choice to be sure, considering how informative the rest of the site is.
- jessriedel 2y ago
  The gushy-ness of the webpage is weird, but note it does not mention Musk at all. It only discusses Starlink and SpaceX.
  - tills13 2y ago
    It is imo even more cringe to be so overtly gushy about a corporation.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      Linking to the jobs page of a company you don't work for is quite strange, yes.

ck2 2y ago

What happens when there are half a dozen startups with 42,000 satellites around earth?

zachmu 2y ago
Lots of space up there, no pun intended.
daemonologist 2y ago
I don't think startups will be able to enter this market, at least not any time soon - it's too capital intensive. We might get several large "constellations" someday though (Starlink, Eutelsat/OneWeb, Amazon Kuiper, Guowang).

zachmu 2y ago

This map gives the odd sense that the sky is absolutely buzzing with satellites and yet they are still incredibly sparse "on the ground". Look at any western US state and you'll see just a handful above at any time.

rightbyte 2y ago

Does Starlink work in Norway or Alaska? I would never have guessed Starlink had this many satellites.

panick21_ 2y ago
Yes. But there are much less of the sats. There is basically a line at a certain latitude where the density of population is highest. So must sats circle between between that area. But to cover the things further north (or south) respectively, SpaceX also has sats in polar orbit. Those allow for coverage from the poles to the max latitude.

DarmokJalad1701 2y ago

> The last Starlink mission launched > 1 days, 17 hours, 0 mins, 21 sec ago. > The next Starlink mission launches in > 51 minutes, 19 seconds. > Over the last 365 days, Starlink launches every > 5.14 days on average. Insane launch cadence on display. And it is only going to get better.

stevecalifornia 2y ago

This can't be an accurate realt-time map. The satellites are travelling way, way too fast. This map shows a satellite travelling from LA to Denver in 10 seconds. You can literally see the satellites at night and they do not traverse horizon to horizon 1/10th as fast as depicted here.

slater 2y ago
By default, it's set at 16x speed (top-right on desktop)

weberer 2y ago

It looks just like that one scene in End of Evangelion.

neonihil 2y ago

This one has been around for ages, and it does work on mobile too. https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/