Are artificial satellites still using "dial-up internet"? You read that right, but now satellites are finally going to connect to broadband.

California wildfires captured by the European Space Agency's Sentinel-2 satellite | NASA Earth Observatory

Wildfires are spreading in California. Fire commanders are staring at the thermal images sent back by satellites, trying to determine the direction of the fire. But this image is already 20 minutes old.

In 20 minutes, the fire may have crossed the ridge and changed its direction. The deployment of equipment and personnel is all based on this outdated information. This dilemma is about to become history.

SpaceX has just announced that commercial satellite operators will soon be able to use Starlink's laser communication service, reducing the data latency from an average of 20 minutes to almost real-time.

It sounds like just a technological upgrade, but it reveals a surprising fact: Most artificial satellites are actually out of contact most of the time.

Satellites in space are still using "dial-up internet"

We are used to our mobile phones being always online, so it's easy to think that those satellites in space are also connected to the network 24/7. In fact, the opposite is true. When most satellites orbit the Earth, their communication with the ground is intermittent. They have to wait until they fly over the ground receiving station to transmit data and receive new instructions. It's like the old-fashioned dial-up internet, where you can only send and receive information when the phone line is connected. Once it flies over, the signal is cut off.

Artificial satellites usually can only communicate with the ground when flying over the ground receiving station.

The only exception is the International Space Station. It enjoys the service of a data relay satellite constellation specially deployed by NASA, enabling almost uninterrupted communication. However, that system is extremely expensive and only serves government missions, such as the space station and the Hubble Telescope. Ordinary commercial satellites can't afford it. The consequences of this technological gap are obvious. When the wildfire monitoring satellite FireSat captures a wildfire, the footage has to be stored in the satellite's memory until it flies over the ground station for downloading. This waiting period can be dozens of minutes or even hours.

For forest fires, every minute can be a matter of life and death.

Laser networking: Turning satellites into space routers

Starlink has changed this situation. It was originally a space internet project, using thousands of low-orbit satellites to provide broadband services to ground users. However, SpaceX has installed laser communication terminals between the satellites, enabling them to transmit data to each other and form a global space network.

Starlink satellites form a space network through laser communication | SpaceX

The performance of this laser communication system is quite amazing. According to the data released by SpaceX, a single mini laser terminal can achieve a transmission speed of 25Gbps over a distance of 4000 kilometers. A high-definition movie can be transmitted in just a few seconds.

More importantly, laser communication is not restricted by radio spectrum regulations. For the radio bands used in traditional satellite communication, each country has strict frequency allocation regulations, resulting in limited bandwidth. Laser communication uses optical channels, which can theoretically carry a much larger amount of data.

Laser communication terminals on Starlink satellites | SpaceX

Now, a startup called "Muon Space" has become the first to take the plunge. They announced that they will install Starlink's laser terminals on their own satellites. With one terminal installed, a satellite can maintain an online time of 70% to 80%; with two terminals, it can achieve 100% full-time connection. This means that for the first time, satellites can respond to instructions and transmit data in real-time, just like ground servers. In the words of Greg Smirin, the president of Muon Space, satellites have transformed from isolated flying vehicles into real-time nodes on the Starlink global network.

What will happen when moving from "dial-up" to broadband?

The impact of this transformation may be more profound than we imagine. The most direct beneficiaries are applications with extremely high timeliness requirements. In addition to wildfire monitoring, there are also maritime search and rescue, disaster assessment, and early warning of crop pests and diseases. In the past, satellite data in these scenarios often arrived late; now, the information arrives almost synchronously.

But what's more imaginative are the applications that were previously impossible. For example, space live streaming. Historically, we could only see real-time footage from space during manned space missions or rocket launches because it required the temporary use of an expensive relay system. Now, with laser networking, any satellite equipped with a Starlink terminal can start a live stream.

High-resolution real-time Earth monitoring and continuous meteorological observation videos are no longer technical problems. SpaceX's own Starship rocket is already using this system. During the recent test flight, the Starship live-streamed the entire process of re-entering the atmosphere, and the footage penetrated the plasma layer surrounding the rocket. This was impossible in the past - high-temperature plasma would block radio signals, causing a communication blackout. But the laser penetrated this barrier.

The footage of the Starship re-entering the atmosphere during its 11th test flight was transmitted back through the laser link of Starlink satellites | SpaceX

A more radical idea is in-orbit AI computing. Since satellites can be connected to the network at any time, in theory, they can be regarded as nodes in a space data center, processing data directly in orbit and calling on ground computing power when necessary. This can significantly reduce the amount of raw data that needs to be transmitted and make some tasks with extremely high real-time requirements feasible. Smirin used a very accurate analogy: It's like when the ground internet upgraded from dial-up to broadband. You know it will change many things, but no one could predict exactly what applications would emerge at that time. BBS was quickly phased out, replaced by streaming media, social networks, and cloud computing, giving rise to an entire new generation of internet ecosystem.

A detail worth noting

Muon Space's first satellite equipped with a laser terminal won't be launched until early 2027. However, they have already received many commercial orders, and the identity of one of their customers is thought-provoking: The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. This agency is the spy satellite department of the U.S. government. They announced that they will purchase the data from the FireSat wildfire monitoring satellites. Nominally, it's for wildfire monitoring services, but it's obvious that the thermal imaging system can do more than just detect fires.

Employees of Muon Space pose in front of the first FireSat satellite launched this year. This satellite doesn't have a Starlink laser terminal installed yet | Muon Space

This reveals a signal: When commercial satellites acquire real-time networking capabilities, their value boundaries become blurred. A satellite originally used for civilian monitoring may be favored by intelligence agencies after being equipped with a high-speed data link. Technology itself is neutral, but its popularization will reshape many rules of the game. Another customer of Muon Space is the "Global Fire Monitoring Center", a non-profit organization supported by Google. They plan to deploy 50 FireSat satellites by 2030 to form a global wildfire early warning network. If each satellite can transmit data in real-time, the response speed of this network will reach an unprecedented level. The golden time for extinguishing forest fires is often only a few hours, and real-time monitoring may really save many lives and properties. More than a year ago, SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft carried out a private spacewalk mission. It was the first time humans exited the spacecraft without the participation of a government space agency. That mission also tested another technology: communicating with the ground through the Starlink network. At that time, many people thought it was just a technical verification, but no one expected it to enter commercial use so soon.

In September 2024, private astronaut Jared Isaacman completed the first commercial spacewalk during his self-funded "Polaris Dawn" mission | SpaceX

Now it seems that the significance of that test goes far beyond that. It proves that it's technically feasible to establish an infrastructure in space similar to the ground internet. And once this infrastructure is rolled out, the operating logic of the entire space industry will be rewritten. What we're witnessing may not just be an upgrade of satellite communication methods, but a transformation of space from a distant place occasionally visited to a nearby neighbor that's always online. This transformation is quiet, but its aftershocks will last for a long time.

Source: ArsTechnica

Cover image source: SpaceX

This article is from the WeChat official account “Guokr42”, author: Steed. Republished by 36Kr with permission.