If you’ve looked up at the night sky recently, you might have been surprised to see a train of bright lights moving across from one side to the other. What's going on? The lights appear in groups of up to 60 in a long line. There have been numerous reports from places like the U. S. and U. K. of people seeing them, with explanations ranging from UFOs to an alien invasion. Of course. But fear not. These lights are actually satellites, launched into space by the U. S. company SpaceX, run by South African entrepreneur Elon Musk. And they're a bit controversial. The satellites are part of something called Starlink. This is a project by SpaceX to launch thousands of satellites into orbit, and beam the internet to Earth from space. SpaceX hopes to use this to fund missions to Mars. Since the first launch in May 2019, SpaceX has launched about 360 of these satellites. Each weighs about 260 kilograms and is roughly the size of a flattened car, with a large solar panel that reflects sunlight. SpaceX’s ultimate goal is to blanket the space around Earth in these satellites. They plan to operate 12,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, and potentially up to 42,000. This is known as a mega constellation. The satellites are launched in batches of 60, with SpaceX aiming to launch roughly two batches very month – although they haven’t quite achieved that frequency yet. Each time the satellites are launched, on the company’s own reusable Falcon 9 rockets, they are placed into orbit about 290 kilometers above the surface of Earth. The satellites then use their onboard ion engines to raise their altitude up to their operational orbits of between 340 and 550 kilometers. This can take several months to do. During these months, the satellites can appear very visible in the night sky when they fly over your location because of their reflective surfaces. After dusk and before dawn, when the Sun has dipped just below the horizon, the satellites reflect the Sun’s light back onto the ground, making them shine quite brightly. As they pass overhead, they appear like a bright train of lights as the satellites follow one after the other in orbit. SpaceX’s goal with Starlink is to beam high-speed internet to every single location on Earth, from London to Antarctica. People will then pay a fee to access the service, with speeds estimated to be slower than fibre broadband but faster than existing satellite internet services. However, people have raised concerns about the number of satellites SpaceX is launching. Today only about 2,000 active satellites orbit Earth; SpaceX will increase this by six times, and possibly by 21 times. This poses a considerable risk for satellites colliding in Earth orbit. If two satellites collide, they can explode and produce thousands of small pieces of debris. This happened in 2009 between a U. S. and Russian satellite. Each of these pieces of debris can then also impact other satellites.
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