Starlink
Although the initial focus of Starlink will be to provide broadband connections in rural areas, SpaceX is also quite aware of the application potential of Starlink in the aviation and marine industries. According to The Verge, Starlink Vice President Jonathan Hofeller stated on an aviation industry forum earlier that Starlink “is in discussions with multiple airlines” and that “Starlink products for civil aircraft are already under development. Not only The technology demonstration has been completed before, and I hope to put the complete product on the plane in the near future.”
Hofeller also said that the antennas used in these aircraft will be quite similar to the consumer version, but will be specialized for the special use environment of the aircraft. The current Starlink system can only use satellites as relays to connect users to base stations under the coverage of the same satellite, but it obviously does not work on aircraft flying over the ocean. Therefore, if Starlink wants to provide trans-oceanic network services, it is bound to wait until the satellite is equipped with inter-satellite laser communication technology. Naturally, Starlink is not the only company that looks at high profits in the aviation industry. In addition to the synchronous orbit network satellites that are already providing satellite network services (but much slower and much higher latency), it is also a low-orbit satellite network Viasat is also in discussions with Delta Air Lines.
Starlink currently has nearly 1,800 satellites in orbit, and has completed the construction of the first “shell” at an altitude of 550km. The second shell will be complementary to the first, with the same number of satellites built at a slightly lower height (540km). Later, Starlink will fill in the “holes” (mainly polar regions) that the two main shells cannot serve at an inclination angle of 70 degrees and an inclination angle of 97.6 degrees. The total number of satellites at the final completion is about 4,400. With Starlink having launched 14 times (approximately 780 satellites) in the first half of this year, the launch will be completed in about a year and a half.