- 3486 - SATELLITES - for world peace? Elon Musk’s SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service is active in Ukraine with more terminals on the way. The move comes as Ukraine's internet service has been disrupted by Russia's invasion.
------------------------------- 3486 - SATELLITES - for world peace?
- Musk made the statement on Twitter Saturday (February, 26 , 2022) after being asked by a Ukrainian government official if SpaceX could provide more Starlink services to the country after Russian troops invaded Ukraine last week.
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- Internet services in Ukraine has seen "significant disruptions" in the capital city of Kyiv and across much of the country due to Russian military operations and the ensuing fighting, the monitoring group Netblocks.
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- "@ElonMusk, while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand,” Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who is also the country's minister of digital transformation, asked Musk on Twitter Saturday.
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- “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine," Musk replied. "More terminals en route."
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- SpaceX's Starlink service offers high-speed broadband access via a massive constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit and is designed to ultimately provide coverage anywhere on Earth, with a focus on remote areas or underserved regions. Starlink users access the space-based internet service using a satellite dish placed on or near the location where service is needed.
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- Musk and SpaceX recently sent 50 Starlink terminals to the island nation of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean to provide free internet access to help reconnect remote villages there after a massive volcano eruption and tsunami in January, according to Reuters. The Starlink terminals will help restore communications with some of the hardest hit regions from the natural disaster.
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- SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites forced to dodge Russian anti-satellite test debris
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- SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites could be used for GPS navigation
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- Since 2019, SpaceX has launched over 2,000 of the satellites for the constellation, which is expected to reach up to 14,000 in its initial form. The company's most recent launch occurred on Friday (February 25, 2022), when SpaceX lofted 50 new Starlink satellites into orbit from a pad at California's Vandenberg Space Force Base.
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- SpaceX's next Starlink mission is expected to lift off later this week on Thursday (March 3, 2022) from Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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- Other news on low Earth satellites. Experts agree that the Russian anti-satellite missile test that shattered into pieces the defunct surveillance satellite Cosmos 1408 on November 15, 2021, will cause headaches to operators of low Earth orbit satellites for years.
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- Russia's act is akin to releasing a toxic chemical into the ocean. Everybody who flies satellites in the affected patch of space is now left to deal with the fallout, the cloud of over 1,500 pieces of space debris larger than 4 inches and thousands of smaller fragments that can't be tracked from Earth.
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- These fragments hurtle through space at speeds of 15,700 miles per hour, completely out of control, threatening everything in their path.
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- Among those at risk is the International Space Station, where the seven astronauts on board had to shelter from debris shortly after the ASAT test, and SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation of nearly 2,000 internet-beaming satellites.
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- The anti-satellite test, Johnson told Space.com, is likely a breach of a piece of international space law called the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, which binds countries that fly anything in space to use space responsibly and in harmony with others.
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- Article IX of the treaty, which was signed in 1967, urges countries to cooperate and assist each other in their endeavors in space, avoid harmful contamination of the space environment and not interfere with the interests of other space faring nations.
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- Russia chose to show off its satellite-destruction skills on a target situated right in the middle of one of the most heavily used portions of space near Earth. Cosmos 1408 orbited at an altitude of about 290 miles, just 25 miles above the space station.
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- Starlink satellites orbit at 340 miles. There are many others, including, a couple of hundred spacecraft of Earth observation company Planet, which fly between 280 and 310 miles.
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- More avoidance maneuvers mean that satellites will run out of fuel faster and spend more time off, not providing the service they had been designed for, as they have to be shut down during the maneuvers.
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- Ironically, the burden to prevent further collisions and the creation of further orbital debris is now on the shoulders of these satellite operators, who will have to regularly summon expert teams to navigate these treacherous encounters.
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- Their business case and their operations are really prejudiced by this debris cloud, even if they can predict it perfectly. If they have to continue performing maneuvers to get away from debris, I think that could severely impact their business.
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- The legal basis for making a claim against Russia is not straightforward. In 1972, the U.N. negotiated an addition to the Outer Space Treaty, the Liability Convention, which states that every state that flies anything in space is absolutely liable for any damage it causes on Earth, in the air above it, or in space.
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- So far, this liability has only been called upon once. In 1978, Russia agreed to pay 3 million Canadian dollars ($2.36 million) after remnants of its reconnaissance satellite Cosmos 954 survived the atmospheric re-entry and scattered highly radioactive material along a 370-mile-wide patch of northern Canada.
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- But no one has ever made anyone yet pay for damages caused in space. Despite the international outcry, China got away with generating the largest ever cloud of space debris in history with an anti-satellite missile test in 2007. Fragments from this incident are still the biggest threat for spacecraft in near-Earth space.
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- Two years later, 2009, Russia's defunct satellite Cosmos 2251 collided with the U.S. commercial telecommunications satellite Iridium 33. The collision produced another massive cloud of debris that clutters the orbit to this day. In this case, too, nobody paid.
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- International space law says that the Liability Convention is mostly understood to cover actual physical damage to a satellite. If a piece of debris generated by the Russian ASAT test destroyed a Starlink satellite, for example, SpaceX could ask the U.S. government to request the government of Russia to pay for the damage on the company's behalf. But as long as Starlink and all other operators manage to keep dodging the junk, compensation for the financial damage caused by this constant need to maneuver would be more difficult to exact.
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- In recent years, experts from all over the world have been increasingly calling for stricter space junk prevention measures. More and more satellites are being launched and with that, the risk of space collisions grows. There are currently about 3,000 defunct satellites zooming around Earth.
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- Spent rocket stages that lofted those satellites also remain in orbit and occasionally explode, generating masses of fragments. Collisions between space debris and old satellites spawn further clutter.
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- Estimates are that space around Earth hosts a staggering 36,500 pieces of junk larger than 4 inches, 1 million pieces between 0.4 inches and 4 inches across, and 330 million pieces that are smaller than 0.4 inches but bigger than 0.04 inches. Each of these fragments is capable of destroying or at least significantly damaging a satellite.
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- In August 2016, a fragment of space junk less than 0.2 inches in size smashed through the solar panel of the European Earth-observing Copernicus Sentinel-1A satellite, causing immediate loss of power. The spacecraft recovered from the incident and continues its mission to this day. But the mission's operators said the consequences would have been much more severe had the main body of the spacecraft been hit.
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- Do we need an accident on orbit, a collision on orbit, a catastrophe on orbit before we get serious?'. Maybe Elon Musk will show the world how important these satellites are to world communication?
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March 2, 2022 SATELLITES - for world peace? 3486
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