Amazon's Project Kuiper, which uses optical inter-satellite link (OISL) technology to connect more than 3,000 satellites in a mesh network that blankets Earth, just cleared a final hurdle needed to launch next year.

Project Kuiper: Amazon’s answer to SpaceX’s Starlink passes ‘crucial’ test::Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which uses optical inter-satellite link (OISL) technology to connect more than 3,000 satellites in a mesh network that blankets Earth, just cleared a final hurdle needed to launch next year.

  • @Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
    3•10 months ago

    I’d like to hope that in a few years when we collectively decide this was a bad idea we can start hitting them with lasers and ablatively decelerating them to burn up in the atmosphere.

    I mean I don’t have a lot of hope for that, but call it a wistful fantasy.

    • partial_accumenEnglish
      4•10 months ago

      I’d like to hope that in a few years when we collectively decide this was a bad idea we can start hitting them with lasers and ablatively decelerating them to burn up in the atmosphere.

      If we do nothing at all they’ll burn up in 3-5 years anyway. Starlink operates in a very low orbit. Thats one of the reasons there have to be so many of them. A higher orbit (like MEO instead of LEO) would mean fewer needed satellites for the same level of coverage of the Earth.