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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.