Re:SpaceX sends laser-linked Starlinks to the polar orbit
by rtkwe on Monday January 25, 2021 @08:40PM
(#25911389)
This video goes a bit into the probable topology of the links and gives a good look at how the eventual constellation would look. Eventually in the full constellation there will be 4 easy links to the birds in front, behind, left and right, those 4 will stay in largely the same relative position until they reach the highest latitude of their orbit. Those alone will make an ok link with a bit of a zig zag. The tough ones are those ~180 degrees out of phase those will be crossing roughly perpendicular and at a really high speed.
if you google 'starlink train' and look at some videos, when a batch of 60 starlink satellites is launched ,they're all at the same orbital inclination. they remain at the same inclination but as the weeks go past after their launch, they are spread out to follow each other at several hundred km spacings. but they're still following each other in what is basically a strung out conga line of satellites. communications between forward/rear satellites in the same batch should not be nearly as difficult to aim.
what would be difficult to aim and maintain links on would be cross-plane links between two different sets of satellites, with very high differing relative velocities.