If the world wants to say who "launches satellites", it is the US space exploration technology company - SpaceX, at least few companies can match it. The company's satellite launches launch a wave almost every once in a while.
No, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 47 "Starlink" satellites at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and after this wave, the cumulative number of launched "Starlink" satellites has exceeded 2200. The number of this constellation of satellites can be said to be quite large.
After this launch, SpaceX said on social media that the launch is the ninth Falcon 9 launch completed in the first nine weeks of 2022. It belongs to the 39th batch of "Starlink" satellites deployed by SpaceX special networking, and it is also the 6th batch of "Starlink" networking special distribution this year.
Next, 17 times will be implemented is the special deployment of "Starlink" satellite network launches, it is conceivable that the United States SpaceX", the United States SpaceX "Starlink" satellite constellation, will eventually achieve thousands of satellites running at the same time, which is quite rare in the world.
Of course, this is not a surprise, SpaceX's satellite manufacturing capabilities are very strong, and publicly said that it can build 45 satellites a week, and has launched 240 satellites in a month. This year, SpaceX plans to launch about 50 times, an average of one launch per week.
Of course, this data has been seen by many people, 17 times above, and this is said 50 times, right? One is the number of rockets for the Falcon 9, and the other is for the number of satellite launches, so it is not the same, don't be mistaken.
For SpaceX in the United States, there are actually many problems, and we also have problems to worry about. That is, whether launching so many satellites will pose a threat to the Chinese space station again, after all, the Chinese space station has been affected more than once. This is worth thinking about. At the same time, the US SpaceX company also released the "2022 satellite tragedy" in the launch, whether the threat to space will continue to exist, we will see step by step.
Satellite Massacre 2022! SpaceX triggered
In February 2022, SpaceX triggered the 2022 satellite tragedy, and it was also after the Falcon 9 rocket launch into space that there was a big problem. That is, the 49 Starlink satellites launched in this batch did not enter the predetermined orbit, and in the process of launching, they were "naturally attacked". I don't know if this is a coincidence, according to the technical strength of the United States, such a problem is also magical.
And before SpaceX launched this batch of starlink satellites, the United States also announced solar activity, and the result was that SpaceX triggered the satellite tragedy. During the launch, atmospheric resistance was encountered, and the result was 50% higher than at the time of launch. Although the SpaceX team identified the problem and activated the satellite into safe mode, it was still unable to get rid of the impact.
As a result, as many as 40 moons were destroyed, which was caused by geomagnetic storms from solar activity. This is the 2022 satellite tragedy triggered by SpaceX. Of course, the launch did not encounter a geomagnetic storm attack. But here we must also remind that in the future, when launching satellites in any country, we also need to pay attention to the activity of the sun, after all, the sun is still developing towards the maximum value.
It is expected that there will be a weakening around 2025, and before that, it may erupt from time to time, so this needs to be vigilant. Once affected, it is not a good thing for any satellite launch project.
In addition to the SpaceX trigger, the satellite tragedy in 2022, we need to pay more attention to SpaceX launching more satellites, after all, it has already affected the mainland.
SpaceX satellites have threatened the Chinese space station
In 2021, the mainland publicly stated that the starlink satellite launched by SpaceX has approached the Chinese space station twice. In this case, in order to avoid the possibility of launch collision, the Chinese space station has to adopt preventive collision avoidance control ("emergency collision avoidance"), and in order to produce practical evidence, the mainland has also collected data on two satellites.
One of them is the Starlink-1095 satellite, which was deorbited on September 20, 2021, and on July 1, 2021, it is likely to pose a threat to the Chinese space station in preparation for decommissioning in automatic orbit reduction mode. There is also a Starlink-2305 satellite, which occurred on October 21, and the mainland has also taken emergency shelter. And after that, the mainland also informed the United Nations of the dangerous approach of the Starlink satellite to the Chinese space station and threaten the safety of astronauts in orbit.
However, what was never expected was that the United States actually denied this claim, saying that the activity of the Starlink satellite did not meet the threshold of the established emergency collision standard, so in any case there was no need for emergency notice, which was really unacceptable, the evidence was in front of it, and it was still being denied.
And after that, NASA is saying that it is worried that the STARlink satellite of the US SpaceX company may exacerbate the risk of spacecraft collision, and it is conceivable that the probability of future space crises may increase.
However, SpaceX also released a "SpaceX Strategy for Space Sustainability and Security", claiming that the reliability of the entire network of satellites that have been launched is higher than 99%, and only 1% of satellites have failed due to higher orbital altitudes.
Seeing this statement, everyone may also think, isn't there still 1% of satellites that may have problems? Indeed, the future may still need to be paid attention to.
Of course, the mainland has actually made adjustments to the problem of the space station, and the China Manned Space Engineering Office has publicly stated that the TLE orbital root number parameters of the Chinese space station are released on the official website, and they are released daily, so as to completely disclose the position and avoid the impact.
Moreover, the United States is also a real-time monitoring satellite system, there are data, both sides are "open and transparent" data, if there is a problem in the future, then the probability is that there is a "big problem". Therefore, the mainland's wave of plans is still good.
So, the more SpaceX satellites are launched, the more we need to pay attention, and that's just over 2200. The SpaceX program is to launch a total of 42,000 communications satellites into low orbit in space, which is a considerable number. Launching so much is certainly also about building a global system and occupying a certain market. Then the problem arises again.
Will the launch of so many Starlink satellites affect Beidou?
Beidou system is a global satellite navigation system developed by the mainland itself, and is also the third mature satellite navigation system after GPS and GLONASS, and in positioning, the accuracy is decimeter, centimeter level, speed measurement accuracy of 0.2 m / s, timing accuracy of 10 nanoseconds, quite powerful.
According to the mainland's new round of plans, after the completion of Beidou-3, the mainland has embarked on the construction and development of the next generation of Beidou, and will build a more intelligent, more ubiquitous and more integrated system by 2035.
Therefore, the future Beidou may be more strengthened. That launched so many Starlink satellites? Will it affect Beidou? In fact, from the four mainstream systems, everyone can see that they are all running separately and are not interfered with each other, even if the Starlink satellite launches more, it will not affect the operation of Beidou. At the same time, we can also see from the orbital operating parameters of major satellite systems that there is no mutual impact.
GPS in the United States, GLONAS in Russia, and Galileo system in the European Union all use medium circular orbit satellites (MEOs) evenly distributed in 3 or 6 orbital planes to form satellite constellations.
The Beidou system is different, the Beidou satellite height is 2.13-2.15 million kilometers, which is not at all at a height. Moreover, the altitude of the Starlink satellite is about 555 kilometers in orbit, so it is even more unlikely to be affected, and everyone can rest assured.
To sum up, satellites will have their own specific orbits, so more and less are not interfering with each other. The impact on the signal mainly comes from climatic factors, electromagnetic interference and other factors, which is the general situation.