There's only 568km from Tonga to Niue, who still have Internet. I wonder if that's close enough to use a hypothetical Niue base station to bounce Internet off a Starlink to Tonga. Might be a little patchy depending on the exact locations of the satellites at any time.

Edit: Looks like Starlink doesn't have great coverage at this latitude anyway, currently: https://findstarlink.com/#4032402;3

The site you're linking to is talking about visible starlink satellites, not starlink coverage.

Starlink is definitely available at that latitude (in the sense that there is signal, not in the sense that SpaceX is currently taking customers or has set up base stations), in the southern hemisphere the only significant landmass that doesn't have more or less constant coverage is Antarctica.

Back when coverage was more spotty, I made this map. I'd probably change some things if I revisited it now that there are lots of satellites up, but it's good enough for demonstrating the point: https://droid.cafe/starlink

Thanks yes I misunderstood the site

The satellites have a ground footprint of about 4700km, so if there was a base station in Niue it should be easily in range. From what I’m reading no one on Tonga has a Starlink terminal, and there aren’t any base stations in the pacific.

Are you sure? AFAIK the laser links are just needed to further reduce latency. I don’t think SpaceX needs any ground stations. Elon even talked about governments in countries like Afghanistan not being able to do anything against their citizens using Starlink apart from “shaking their fists at the sky”.

> I don’t think SpaceX needs any ground stations

It is not magic. You signal from the user terminal has to reach a ground station / gateway connected to the Internet. Either there are inter-satellite links and the signal can be routed to a gateway far away. Or there are not and the gateway need to be at most a few hundred kilometers away if you satellites are in orbit at 400km.

> Afghanistan not being able to do anything against their citizens using Starlink apart from “shaking their fists at the sky”.

Or sentence to death people caught with a Starlink dish on their roof.

You are right.

A ground station is required in the current version of Starlink. Without it, the satellite has no internet connection to offer to clients.

Ah. Of course. A ground station within the visibility cone of the individual satellite. You are right!

Damn, Elon was telling a stupid lie? Consider me shocked. Anyway, when's your dancing robot coming? Mine's about to ship.