SpaceX to Launch 64 Satellites at Once to Build a Truly Global Internet of Things
For a long time, Elon Musk has promised a constellation of thousands of satellites, dubbed Starlink. Musk hopes these satellites will one day handle half of all internet traffic — and generate billions in revenue for access fees. This is one way he expects to fund his future Mars endeavours.
SpaceX announced that two demonstration satellites they built and launched earlier in 2018 already show that internet from space can be just as efficient as people expect from cables on Earth.
Currently, a SpaceX rocket is set to launch a raft of internet satellites from a variety of startups — except this time the target audience is machines.
In a historic launch scheduled for Wednesday, SpaceX will hoist 64 satellites at once, the most significant number for a single mission on US ground. Eight of the satellites on board a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base will be from companies hoping to build a truly global Internet of Things (IoT) via the transformation of satellite communications.
Most of today’s IoT devices, like smart meters and agricultural sensors, depend on Wi-Fi or cellular signals. This leaves remote areas, farms, and much of the world’s oceans without internet. Fabien Jordan, the founder and CEO of Astrocast, one of the startups sending a satellite up in the historic launch, stated that for 90 percent of the planet’s surface, you need satellites.
Currently, if shippers want to track assets at sea, farmers wish to verify the health of their crops, or governments want to monitor dangerous bridges, they must launch powerful devices connecting to traditional satellite communications providers including Iridium, Globalstar and Inmarsat.
However, these systems can be expensive and power-hungry, making those who use them limited to the wealthiest of people or companies. For instance, an oil company might monitor a few stretches of a pipeline for leaks, but an environmental watchdog could not afford its own sensors. With low-cost, low-power IoT systems such as those launching soon, that could very well change.
The satellite that Astrocast will launch is a tiny CubeSat measuring only 30 centimetres long. Its rivals on the SSO-A SmallSat Express, as the launch is being named, ranging from 10 to 60 centimetres in length — all a fraction of the size, weight, and cost of communications satellites presently in orbit.
But, these CubeSats are not powerful enough to deal with gaming streams, video, or even voice calls. They are designed just for the tiny bursts of data that agriculture, infrastructure, and asset-tracking IoT devices generate.
Hiber is another startup launching an IOT satellite aboard SpaceX’s rocket. Beaming one packet of 144 bytes, approximately the size of a text message, up to Hiber’s satellite daily for a year will cost only a few dollars, as per Hiber CEO Maarten Engelen. Hiber has pilot customers in pipeline monitoring, fisheries, and shipping ready to use their satellite when it goes live.
Five of the six start-ups are launching just one satellite on SSO-A. Only the company Swarm Technologies is putting three on board.
However, most of the start-ups have plans to have constellations of between 60 and 100 satellites eventually. In combination with a handful of ground stations, these should subsequently reduce latencies to about every 15 or 30 minutes. Latency is the time for a signal to get a response over the internet and is usually measured by gamers in milliseconds. Longer latencies don’t matter for IoT since sensors typically only need to phone home once a day.
SpaceX is providing the rocket, but the SSO-A mission is organized by Spaceflight Industries, a Seattle-based company that specializes in CubeSat deployment. Curt Blake, the president of Spaceflight, explained that low earth orbit is not unlike smartphones. When the cost of phones, or rocket launches, becomes low enough people invent a whole bunch of new applications.
Moreover, SSO-A is launching dozens of Earth observation satellites, educational projects, scientific, government and military satellites, in addition to two art projects and even a shooting star memorial which holds cremated human remains.
Careful choreography is required when launching so many satellites at once, so they do not hit the rocket or each other on the way out. Spaceflight has constructed two car-sized spacecraft, known as the Upper Free Flyer and the Lower Free Flyer, which will fire the satellites into their final orbits one after another, using spring-loaded systems similar to pinball plungers.
Once all the satellites are out of the way, the Flyers will each deploy an innovative sail the size of two pool tables to catch faint wisps of atmosphere, dragging them down and causing them to burn up. This will be the first time drag sail technology is deployed on an operational mission.
Another critical aspect of the mission is ensuring that the IoT satellites do not interfere with one another’s radio broadcasts. Swarm and Hiber plan to use the same frequency (148–149.9 MHz) for Earth-to-space communications with their satellites. Hiber will only use the link while passing over its European ground stations, while Swarm will use the frequency over the US. This could be tricky if either company decides to launch ground stations abroad in the future.
However, the primary challenge for these IoT start-ups is to build out their fleets rapidly and then to convince companies to integrate their technology into thousands and ultimately millions of devices back on our home planet.
In about seven years, when SSO-A’s CubeSats naturally re-enter the atmosphere as tiny shooting stars, it’s highly possible that some of the companies who built them will only be memories, too.
https://www.wired.com/story/spacexs-next-launch-will-spark-a-space-internet-showdown/
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