Comment by modeless
16 hours ago
Starlink has already demonstrated the capability to do laser communication with a maneuvering spacecraft in a very different orbit from the constellation, during the Polaris Dawn mission. And Starlink has way more than enough downlink capacity for the "staggering" numbers in the article. 85 TB/day is a drop in the bucket compared to the traffic Starlink sees. Starlink will need to expand their downlink capacity in the future, but not because of demand coming from space. Maybe unless space GPUs actually happen.
Yes, but I was referring to Starlink potentially interoperating with a satellite that they do not own or operate. To my knowledge they have not done this yet, but clearly my Starlink knowledge is a little out of date so if you know of a mission that did this I’d be interested.
> And Starlink has way more than enough downlink capacity for the "staggering" numbers in the article.
This is the only independent analysis of Starlink’s downlink capacity that I know of: https://thexlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Starlink_Anal... (July 2025).
Of course, the new V2’s and V3’s will change the math here considerably.