| ▲ | agent86 17 hours ago | |
> That should clear the next flight to go to orbit and deploy operational satellites! Mid-stream they said they were deploying 20 real V3 Starlink satellites. At the end of the stream the said all 20 had checked out as well. | ||
| ▲ | FLHerne 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
They were real satellites but deployed on the suborbital trajectory of this flight, so will have burned up over the Indian ocean about the time that the ship re-entered. The goal was to get about 20 minutes of testing the new satellites in space, not for them to have any chance of becoming operational. Starship hasn't been entering a full orbit so far because it would be really bad if the relight burn did fail - chunks of ship would rain down a few days/weeks later on some random area anywhere within 27° of the equator. On a much smaller scale this has been an internationally embarrassing problem for China's LM-5. | ||
| ▲ | everfrustrated 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
They need to be in orbit to deploy the satellites into a useful orbit. These ones only lasted for 20 minutes before breaking up. | ||