Seems like a generally good idea, the satellites already need to use star trackers, they need an almanac of what should be there so deviations need to be tracked.

I can entirely see the military perspective though, this is almost a direct challenge for any adversary that any maneuver you perform, we will know about it.

▲

reed1234 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The Space Force already tracks satellites (and debris). I imagine this is more of an improvement for small debris such as bolts, etc.

▲

sfblah 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not.

▲

pjscott 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If you're familiar with the technical specs, I'd be interested in hearing what size of objects the star trackers can sense and at what range. In theory the fancier star trackers can see objects around 10 cm diameter hundreds of kilometers away, without needing to worry about a pesky atmosphere [1], but I don't know how sensitive the sensors on Starlink's current generation satellites are, and this web site isn't saying.

They're mostly touting the improvement in latency over existing tracking, from delays measured in hours to ones measured in minutes. Which is very nice, of course, but the lack of other technical detail is mildly frustrating.

[1] https://www.mit.edu/~hamsa/pubs/ShtofenmakherBalakrishnan-IA...

▲

mikkupikku 4 hours ago | parent [-]

NASA tracks debris 10cm or larger. They also detect and statistically estimate debris as small as 3mm in LEO.

This is my source, from 2021 fwiw: https://oig.nasa.gov/office-of-inspector-general-oig/ig-21-0...

▲

wolvoleo 36 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

10cm is huge, that could even be a functioning 1U cubesat.

▲

pjscott 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So it looks to be just the latency improvement that's noteworthy, then. Thank you!

	▲	sfblah 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. Sorry for the brief answer. Too bad I got downvoted. There's no size improvement.

▲

3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]