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How Starlink Actually Works — Transcript

by The Space Race · 3,239 words · 481 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00I want to take you back to one of the
0:02most important events in the history of
0:04space exploration.
0:07May 23rd, 2019. That's the day that
0:10these odd lights started appearing in
0:13the night sky. A string of 60 little
0:16dots all flying in a perfect row. When
0:19people first saw this, a lot of them
0:21thought it was the beginning of an alien
0:24invasion. But what they were actually
0:26seeing was the arrival of a new way to
0:29connect the world. Fast forward to today
0:32and those 60 little dots have already
0:35grown into a massive constellation of
0:3811,000 Starlink satellites. That's more
0:42than every other non-S Starlink
0:44satellite combined. And just look at the
0:47impact [music] this technology has
0:49already had. Starlink has played a
0:51critical role on the battlefields of
0:53Ukraine. It has enabled disaster relief
0:55across the US and around the world. It's
0:58been a communication lifeline to
0:59pro-democracy activists inside the
1:02authoritarian fortress of Iran. This
1:05initial success of Starlink has
1:06propelled SpaceX from a simple rocket
1:09maker with dreams of landing on Mars to
1:12one of the most valuable publicly traded
1:15companies in American history. And
1:17here's the reason why. It's because
1:19Starlink is more than just a new way to
1:22access the internet. This is the
1:24beginning of a new internet that exists
1:27entirely in outer space. So, the first
1:30thing that we should do is take a look
1:32at how Starlink can actually get
1:34high-speed internet from space all the
1:37way down to you out here in the middle
1:39of nowhere. There are three main pieces
1:42in the chain of communication. One is
1:44your receiver, two is a satellite, and
1:48three is a gateway. You might notice
1:50that only one of the three is actually
1:52in space for now at least. Starting with
1:56the receiver, which SpaceX has
1:58affectionately named Dishy, short for
2:00Dishy McFlatace. But this is not
2:03actually a satellite dish in the way
2:04that you've known them before. Maybe
2:06you're like me and still have one of
2:08these satellite television receivers
2:10attached to the side of your house. It
2:12hasn't been used in a very long time,
2:14but I really like the early 2000s
2:16aesthetic, so I leave it up there as a
2:18decoration. Anyway, these classic dishes
2:20were not flatfaced, and that's because
2:22the U-shape or parabola, to be
2:24scientific, is necessary to concentrate
2:27radio waves onto the antenna, which is
2:29this thing that sticks out. Yes, TV from
2:32space travels on radio, and so does
2:34internet from space, but we'll get
2:37there. Now, you might remember the time
2:39when home satellite TV dishes were the
2:41size of a gazebo, and they would have to
2:43physically move around to change
2:45channels by pointing at different
2:46satellites to pick up the signal. These
2:49second generation dishes don't need to
2:51move because newer satellites broadcast
2:54multiple channels. So, your mini dish
2:56only needs to be pointed at one of them.
2:58And that satellite is parked in an orbit
3:00that we call geocynchronous, which means
3:03that relative to the surface, the
3:05satellite is always in the same place
3:07overhead. But for this to work, the
3:10satellite needs to be orbiting at an
3:12altitude of over 35,000
3:14km, which even for space is very high.
3:19Keep that in mind. Now, to understand
3:21what makes Starling different, we need
3:23to appreciate why Dishy is so flatfaced.
3:27And the best way to do that would be to
3:28crack Dishy open and start pulling out
3:30his guts to see what they look like. The
3:33first thing that we're going to find
3:34underneath the face is the antenna
3:36layer. It's basically a whole bunch of
3:38little circles made from very fine
3:40wires. Each one of the circles is a mini
3:43antenna. There are over 1,200 of them on
3:46here. And this is the reason why your
3:48Starlink receiver can talk to multiple
3:50different satellites without ever having
3:52to physically move around. To see how
3:54that works, we go down one more layer
3:56and find the motherboard. This is the
3:59reason why a Starlink receiver costs so
4:01much. It is the brain that turns your
4:03sheet of a thousand circles into
4:05something called a phased array. In very
4:08simple terms, Dishy is shooting an
4:10invisible beam of information into space
4:12using radio waves. The phased array
4:14allows the beams to be pointed in any
4:16direction, so it can actually move in
4:18real time to track a Starling satellite
4:21as it flies overhead. And that distance
4:23to the Starlink is just about 500 km,
4:26which is a whole lot less than 35,000.
4:30So inside the beam is what we call a
4:32data packet. That's your request to the
4:34internet. And it just got launched into
4:35space where one of those 11,000
4:38satellites is waiting to receive it. On
4:41board each Starlink, there are five
4:43phased arrays just like Dishy that are
4:45dedicated to receiving data packets from
4:48users. That's what your beam is firing
4:50at. And then the satellite is going to
4:52take your request and transfer it over
4:53to another three-phased arrays that are
4:55dedicated to gateway down links. This is
4:58the third piece of the puzzle that most
5:00people are probably less familiar with.
5:03So the gateway is actually here on the
5:05ground. There are over a hundred of them
5:08spread out across the USA and another 50
5:10or so around the world. But just like
5:12the satellites, this number keeps going
5:15up. Each gateway looks like a collection
5:18of nine balls, but these are just round
5:21covers that keep rain and snow off of
5:23the instruments. Inside the cover is a
5:26satellite dish, not a flat one, an
5:28actual parabolic dish. And these do
5:30physically move around to capture data
5:32packets from the satellites. They don't
5:34have to move very much or even very
5:36fast. That's why there are nine with
5:38each one pointing in a different
5:40direction. So, our request from Dishy
5:42has gone up to space, bounced off a
5:45satellite, and come back down to our
5:47closest gateway location. And many of
5:49these gateways happen to be conveniently
5:52located next to a Google data center.
5:55This is not a coincidence. Google was
5:58actually an early backer of SpaceX and
6:00contributed $900 million way back in
6:042015 to fund the development of the
6:06Starlink network in the first place. So
6:09they have this agreement where SpaceX
6:11can rent out space inside Google's
6:13computer clusters and use them to
6:15connect with the local internet. Now
6:17let's say that you are outside of the
6:19United States in some remote location or
6:21maybe in an airplane over the middle of
6:24the Pacific Ocean. Because Starling
6:26satellites are relatively low to the
6:28ground, they're not going to be able to
6:30see one of these gateways and your
6:32antenna at the same [music] time because
6:33the curvature of the Earth is going to
6:36obscure the view. So in this case, the
6:38satellite that receives your data packet
6:40is going to fire up a laser and blast
6:43the information through space to another
6:45satellite, which will then relay the
6:47signal via laser to another satellite.
6:50And then the chain continues until
6:52eventually it finds a clear view of a
6:54gateway and the packet is finally
6:56delivered to the internet, at which
6:58point your request is processed. And
7:00then the web page is returned back
7:02through the same chain to your dishy and
7:04onto your computer screen, which sounds
7:07like way too much stuff to be happening
7:09in a split second, but it starts to make
7:11sense once you wrap your head around how
7:13fast all of this stuff moves through
7:16space. You may have noticed that there
7:18are two methods used by Starlink to
7:20transfer data. The first is radio.
7:23That's how individual satellites talk to
7:25the ground. And the second is laser.
7:27That's how satellites within the
7:29constellation [music] talk to each
7:31other. The reason that we use laser
7:33communication in space is not because it
7:35travels faster. Radio [music] is
7:37actually light. It's just invisible to
7:39the human eye. So, it travels at the
7:41same speed. [music] But laser light is
7:43able to carry more data on one signal,
7:46between 10 and 100 times more
7:48information per beam thanks to its
7:50higher frequency range. So while each
7:52satellite can receive multiple beams at
7:54once from multiple dishes, it has to
7:57compress that down into one single beam
8:00that travels to the next satellite. So
8:03why don't we use laser light to connect
8:06from space to the ground? Well, the
8:08downside to a laser beam is that the
8:10higher frequencies can be easily
8:12scattered by small interruptions such as
8:14clouds, rain, or even just fog.
8:17basically any kind of water vapor which
8:19the Earth's atmosphere is full of has a
8:22tendency to scatter some light waves
8:24which is why the sun looks yellow in the
8:26sky. It's not actually the real sun is
8:28white. It just turns yellow when the
8:30light passes through [music] our sky.
8:32Radio waves carry lower frequencies that
8:34are able to pass right through water
8:36molecules. So that's what we need for
8:38data to reach the ground from space
8:40intact. [music]
8:41Which might raise another important
8:43question. How do we turn the internet
8:45into waves that shoot back and forth
8:48through space? And the answer can be
8:50easier than you think as long as we keep
8:52this all relatively simple. So
8:55everything that you see and hear from
8:57your computer starts out as binary code,
9:00ones and zeros. Now if we look at a
9:03wave, there are two ways to show binary
9:06information. One is amplitude. That's
9:08the height of the wave on a vertical
9:10scale. So we could say that a tall wave
9:12is one and a short wave is zero. [music]
9:15The second method is frequency. That's
9:17the length of the wave on a horizontal
9:19scale. So likewise, a long wave can be
9:22one and a short wave can be zero. This
9:24is the basic idea. And within that
9:26method, there are a million different
9:29ways that data can be encoded. But
9:31that's [music] essentially how we move
9:33information around the world. Now,
9:36here's the reason why Starlink works so
9:38well compared to any other global
9:41transmission network. Back in the day, a
9:43satellite communication from the middle
9:45of the ocean would have to go all the
9:47way up to 35,000 km geocynchronous
9:50orbit, then bounce all the way back down
9:53to a ground station thousands of
9:55kilometers away on the mainland. [music]
9:57And even though the signal moves at the
9:59speed of light, it's still traveling
10:01over a long distance and moving through
10:04some generally outdated and inefficient
10:06computer processing along the way. So
10:09this means there will always be some
10:10inherent lag or latency in the signal
10:12enough that even holding a live
10:14conversation becomes challenging. You
10:17know those clips on television news when
10:19a reporter is trying to call in from a
10:21war zone to a live broadcast and [music]
10:23there's always that really awkward delay
10:25with the host and people end up just
10:26sitting there staring blankly into the
10:29camera. That is satellite communication
10:31lag and you can't have a serviceable
10:33modern internet connection with that
10:35kind of nonsense going on. Gamers would
10:38revolt. This is why Starling satellites
10:41are positioned so low. At 500 km, they
10:44are about 70 times closer than
10:47traditional satellite communications.
10:49This even has an advantage over
10:51traditional groundbased fiber optic
10:53internet. So like 99% of all
10:56communications that cross the Atlantic
10:57Ocean flow through underwater cables.
11:00Inside these fire hosed sized tubes are
11:03bundles of fiber optic cable, basically
11:05glass lines that we fire laser beams
11:07through and carry information from point
11:09A to point B. Laser light can travel
11:12easily through glass as long as it's
11:13high quality and clear, but it still
11:15gets slowed down just a little bit
11:17compared to light moving through the
11:19vacuum of space. So, a laser signal
11:21traveling between Starling satellites
11:23from New York to London will move about
11:2530% faster than even the highest quality
11:28fiber optic line. Now, it's not like we
11:31needed Elon Musk to figure out that
11:32lower satellites equal lower latency,
11:34but we did need SpaceX and particularly
11:37the reusable Falcon 9 rocket to make a
11:39lowaltitude communication constellation
11:42economically viable. Because Starlink is
11:45not hovering in place like a
11:46geocynchronous satellite, they are
11:48flying around the Earth at a rate of
11:50about one orbit every 90 minutes. This
11:53means that from your position on the
11:54ground, it would take one satellite
11:56about five minutes to cross from the
11:58western horizon to the eastern horizon.
12:01And in order to make sure there are
12:02enough satellites that you always have
12:04at least one visible from any given
12:07location on Earth, you need to have
12:09thousands of them in service all at
12:11once. Meanwhile, from 35,000 km, you
12:14only need three satellites to cover the
12:17entire habitable Earth, which is
12:19excluding the North and South Poles. So,
12:22from a business standpoint, do you want
12:23to launch three satellites or 3,000?
12:26[music] Any reasonable capitalist is
12:29going to choose the lower number. Elon
12:31Musk chose the high road. But Elon also
12:34knew that he'd never get to 3,000
12:36satellites or even 300 satellites
12:39without first totally reinventing the
12:41rocket as we know it. So, the first
12:44phase of SpaceX was figuring out how to
12:46make an orbital rocket booster reusable.
12:49This proved to be a really difficult
12:51task. It took them many years and a lot
12:54of exploded rockets. But by the
12:55mid2010s, SpaceX was finally starting to
12:58figure it out. And that's why they
13:00waited until 2019 after the Falcon 9
13:02booster had finally become fully
13:04reliably reusable to start ramping up
13:07Starlink launches. With Starlink V1,
13:09each Falcon 9 launch was able to carry
13:12around 60 into orbit at one time. That
13:15has gone down over time as SpaceX has
13:17upgraded to the bigger and more powerful
13:20V2 satellite with them now being limited
13:22to just 20 per launch, but they've
13:24compensated by flying their rockets at a
13:27much higher frequency. [music] So in
13:282019, SpaceX conducted a total of 13
13:31orbital launches. In 2023, when they
13:34upgraded to Starlink V2, the company
13:36launched 96 times that year. By 2025,
13:39Falcon launches were up to 165. But
13:43there comes a time when you reach a
13:45limit for how many rockets you can
13:46launch at any given time, even with
13:49reusable boosters, which is why SpaceX
13:51is developing their next rocket
13:53platform, the Starship. This is not just
13:56a little bigger than Falcon 9. Starship
13:58dwarfs every other rocket ever made. And
14:01compared to Falcon 9, it increases
14:03payload capacity to low Earth orbit from
14:0620 tons to 200 tons. That is going to
14:09allow SpaceX to make even bigger and
14:11more powerful Starlink V3 satellites and
14:14return to launching 60 of them at a
14:16time. And because Starship makes the
14:18entire rocket fully reusable, not just
14:20the booster, they will be able to launch
14:22even more frequently at an even lower
14:24cost than the existing Falcon 9. But why
14:28do Starling satellites need to keep
14:30getting bigger anyways? Well, bigger is
14:32better, of course, but one of the main
14:34reasons is that Starlink has already
14:36begun moving to a service where you
14:38don't even need a dishy in order to
14:40access the network. This involves direct
14:44to cell phone communication. Makes
14:46sense, right? Of course, we all want a
14:48highquality mobile network everywhere we
14:50go. But unfortunately, this is very hard
14:53to achieve even for Starlink. So the V2
14:56satellites are about twice as wide to
14:58accommodate the extra phased array
15:00antennas made specifically for direct to
15:02cell. These actually need to be bigger
15:05and more powerful than the standard
15:06Starlink antennas because the beam
15:08strength coming up from a cell phone is
15:10so weak compared to the signal from a
15:13dishy. So you need more power just to
15:15hear it. And then on the return back
15:17down, the beam has to be concentrated
15:19enough to hit a moving cell phone and
15:21cut through any surrounding radio noise,
15:23which also requires extra power. What's
15:26crazy is that even with the V2 upgrade,
15:29the best that Starling can do for direct
15:31to cell service right now is voice and
15:34text, no streaming internet. So, there's
15:37a key reason why V3 is necessary. It's
15:40going to have a much bigger and more
15:41powerful mobile antenna. It's also going
15:44to have an even bigger and more powerful
15:46space laser connection system, which is
15:48also very much needed. [music]
15:49Remember before I said that moving data
15:51with a laser through space is much
15:53faster than moving data across the ocean
15:55through fiber optics. That is true for
15:58latency, but as it stands, the Trans
16:00Ocean cable network can still move 100
16:02times more data per second than
16:04Starlink. So, it's not actually a better
16:07solution for all people. And that's the
16:09big hurdle that SpaceX needs to
16:11overcome. If every one of us right now
16:13decided to switch our internet
16:15connection over to Starlink, the amount
16:17of traffic would completely overload the
16:19network and it wouldn't work for
16:21anybody. So, as of right now, Starlink
16:24is a great option when you have no other
16:26good options, like when you're located
16:28in the middle of nowhere. But anywhere
16:30else, there's really no point. Not yet,
16:32at least. Of course, SpaceX has a plan,
16:35and that involves a lot more than just
16:37replacing the existing constellation
16:39with V3 satellites. It means growing the
16:42network to 10 times its current size.
16:45Over 100,000
16:47active Starlinks in Earth orbit, which
16:50sounds crazy, and it is, but that's not
16:53even the end game. Elon Musk wrote in
16:55May 2026, "If growth continues, Starlink
16:59will one day carry the majority of
17:01internet traffic." At that point, it is
17:04the internet and everything else just
17:06connects to Starlink. That means no more
17:09gateways or ground stations or fiber
17:11optic cable. Your request goes up and
17:14the answer comes straight back down. The
17:17internet as we know it today would exist
17:19entirely in space. Which is the reason
17:22why SpaceX is already considered to be
17:24one of the world's most valuable
17:26companies because owning the internet
17:28has a potential value that is almost
17:31beyond comprehension. And that's just
17:33for Starlink alone. But this all really
17:36plays into Musk's other long-term goal
17:38for SpaceX, which is to launch a second
17:41mega constellation of AI data center
17:44satellites called Star Mind. These would
17:47sit much higher above Starlink where
17:49they can capture more light from the sun
17:50for solar power. And that is where all
17:53of the AI models of the future would
17:55live. So in this future, your personal
17:58device will radio a request to Starlink.
18:00Starlink will laser that further up to
18:02Star Mind where a super intelligent AI
18:05will process the answer. Star mind will
18:08laser it back and Starlink will radio it
18:10directly to you. Musk says that to
18:13accomplish this, SpaceX needs to launch
18:151 million satellites into Earth orbit
18:18between both Starlink and Star Mind. And
18:20if you want to see how SpaceX will build
18:22their Star Mind AI satellites on the
18:24moon and then launch them into space
18:26with a giant electromagnetic rail gun,
18:28we've got that video for you on screen
18:30right now. Check it out. It's actually a
18:32really good one. I think you'll enjoy
18:34it.

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