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BecomingCass t1_iy7qh2e wrote

Reply to comment by swissiws in Space Force orders three GPS satellites for $744 million by Corbulo2526

Do Starlink satellites have atomic clocks onboard? That's necessary to work with existing GPS equipment, otherwise you'd need to replace a lot

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swissiws t1_iy83jtv wrote

every satellites in the Stalink network self-destroys every 5 years by burning in the atmosphere. all of them will be replaced sooner or later and this means any kind of equipment could be added if needed

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BecomingCass t1_iy84as5 wrote

There's a lot more to adding functionality to a satellite platform than just having a new one up there

Yes, they'll be replaced, but does the existing platform have space in the power or mass budget to add the needed equipment? If not, can changes be made to the base design without starting from scratch? Will DoD be on board with having a private company operate GPS satellites (Lockheed builds them, but the current GPS system is operated by the USSF)?

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swissiws t1_iy8dvg2 wrote

Us European have our GPS satellites (Galileo) and it's mainly private money

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sleepyzalophus t1_iy8g05q wrote

Galileo is great. It’s effective and relatively inexpensive. It unfortunately requires a lot more maintenance of uploading ephemeris data than GPS does. GPS gets daily ephemeris updates but can go as long as a week without it and still have okay accuracy. Galileo operates with multiple uploads per hour and if a satellite misses updates for a day, as happened in 2019, the whole constellation turns off. The two systems perform different roles so it’s a bit unfair to compare them directly. All of NATO uses GPS so Galileo doesn’t have as strict resiliency requirements; therefore, they can be made differently and cheaper. It’s an excellent system for what it does with its public/private signals though.

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lendluke t1_iy8bp89 wrote

I thought the use of GPS requires devices to always know exactly where the satellites are to triangulate position. I would think using potentially thousands of starlink satellites would require extremely different software/hardware and possibly obsolete every current GPS enabled device.

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