{"id":3477,"date":"2019-06-06T09:37:27","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T13:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckms.ca\/?p=3477"},"modified":"2026-03-17T21:36:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T01:36:36","slug":"trails-made-by-starlink-satellites-iau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/?p=3477","title":{"rendered":"Trails made by Starlink satellites | IAU"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

— 2026-03-17 – Tuesday – Starlink now >10K in orbit. Here’s a tracker<\/a> from spaceweather.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Trails made by Starlink satellites | IAU<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

60 up, 1,140 to go.  (2020-06-09 – now 40,860 to go, after decision to do 42,000 total)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One point: the link suggests these satellites will fade; a week after launch they were mag. 3 to 6, and seemed to me to be heading dimmer (magnitudes work in reverse, like wire gauge, well, AWG at least… ).  So they could be out of naked eye view (>~mag 6) if they go much higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if they’re doing 12000 total over 10 years, 200 launches, 20 a year.  So ~2 times a month there will be a multi-week interruption in dark sky astronomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another point: these satellites, as with all that aren’t generating their own light (which is all current satellites), are visible by the reflected light from the just-set sun.  Once the sun sets far enough, sunlight doesn’t reach these satellites.  Think of being on the satellite, 300km high orbit, the sun sets when *you* can’t see it anymore.  And for satellites in such a low orbit, this is not very long, perhaps 1 hour after sunset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Update 2020-06-09<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of the recent Starlink 6 (2020-03-18), Starlink 7 (2020-04-22), Starlink 8 (2020-06-04), that’s 3 launches in 78 days, or ~25 days between launch.  BUT Starlink 8 was supposed to go before Space-X\/NASA Demo 2 (took Bob & Doug to ISS, first US launch of people) but was weather-delayed on first attempt (??date??) and then delayed to after Demo 2 due to SN1 ??2?? explosion the night before Demo 2 (which must have made Bob & Dough at least a tittle bit nervous, even given the large diffs between the rockets sitting below them and what blew up in Boca Chica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And going forward, Starlink 9 is 2020-06-12 (+8 days post Starlink 8) and Starlink 10 is 2020-06-24 (+20 days from Starlink 8, +12 from Starlink 9).  Getting close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s a summary of LEO satellites planned in the next 10 years<\/a> (Google Sheet)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>2024-02-25 – added preliminary info for Chinese constellations (~6-7mins):
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/live\/8wcoQqrGcis?si=vuPqJnGimJiu-f3v <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Below<\/a>
Below here be dragons. Not for human consumption. Turn back, for this way madness lies.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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original table, for reasons. use the google sheets link above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

   Already in LEO:  ~4,900    (includes Iridium’s 82)<\/span>
   Starlink<\/a>:        42,000    (was 12,000 initially)<\/span>
   OneWeb<\/a>:          ~2,500    (they’re applying for 48,000!)<\/span>
   Globalstar<\/a>:          24    (???)<\/span>
   Project Kuiper<\/a>:   7,000+  ( Amazon \/ Jeff Bezos? read the 7k+ figure ~2021-11-06)<\/span>
   Facebook Athena<\/a>:    ???    (???)<\/span>
    Thousand Sails<\/a>: 14,000    China <\/p>\n\n\n\n


  Est. 2030 Total: ~57,660    (was <\/span>22,660 before Starlink’s change to 42,000)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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— 2024-08-08 – Thursday – China is putting up another constellation:
Thousand Sails is a Chinese initiative to\u00a0compete with Starlink<\/a>. Officials say that 108 satellites are planned for launch this year in separate batches of 36 and 54 satellites; another 500+ are planned for 2025. Ultimately the megaconstellation will contain more than 14,000 satellites (Starlink currently has about 6,200).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— 2026-03-17 – Tuesday – Starlink now >10K in orbit. Here’s a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[282],"tags":[34,97,74,201,21],"class_list":["post-3477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-astronomy","tag-elon-musk","tag-space","tag-starlink-et-al","tag-uh-oh","wpcat-282-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3477"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44600,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions\/44600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ckms.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}