This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Good article. Very interesting.
TL;DR: Starlink recievers use methods to make it so they don't have to be directly positioned at satellites; this in turn leaves them vulnerable to "side lobe jamming" and GPS spoofing. The suggestion is to point them directly and cover them i.e. in a pit or in a cavity of some such so that the jamming / spoofing doesn't reach it.
Thanks for actually discussing the article instead of feeding the trolls
It sounds like the downside here would be that you loose reliability in your connection. Probably fine for most things.
Seems like they’ve already lost the reliability anyway due to the jamming
Yeah, you lose reliability. If you put the antenna in a pit it will be limited in its beamforming capability. This restricts the number of visible satellites, leading to situations where no satellites are visible.
Iran is the most sanctioned country in the world yet 50,000 Starlink terminals somehow made their way in.
it turns out the not CIA run "National Endowment for Democracy" paid for them
I mean, if you want to promote division within a country, ensuring that countries citizenry has access to your propaganda is pretty important.
Net positive, fuck Starlink and fuck Musk. Time to learn from the persians and block your neighbouring Starlink hardware.
Some peoples only access to reliable Internet is starlink.
I don't like musk at all, but until there's a reliable alternative, it may be the only thing people have access to.
This is an argument for community run fiber, not for Musk.
It's Musk, it's shit. People organized revolutions since the dawn of time without internet, they can do it again. In fact, no internet reduces the chance of foreign interference and the people can fee themselves without putting another British/US puppet in power there.
What the shit is up with the forced tracking cookies on this site?
The aim is to prevent as many images and news as possible from reaching the public, which is why the Iranian government is blocking communication network.
No. The aim is to prevent cyber attacks and coordinated sabotage by drone warfare, like Israel used in June in the first hours of their attack, and like the US did when they kidnapped Maduro.
Eh? You don’t need open internet for drone attacks.
I should have clarified. Israel used drones smuggled in by agents, and remote-controlled using the internet, to disable air defenses and infrastructure in the first stage of their attack.
What is going to happen when countries decide that they don't want starlink satellites over thei air space and start to blow them up?
It would be hard to do? How much would that affect the general use of starlink for users on other parts of the world?
Given that space isn't owned by any one country, and Starlink is a US company, whose services are used by the US government, there's a very good chance there would be military retaliation.
Look up Kessler syndrome for an answer as to what may happen if starlink satellites were attacked, although I think I recall people more knowledgeable than me stating this orbit is low enough where it may not be a permanent issue. Nations only control their airspace up to the Karman line which is 100km up. Starlink satellites are well beyond that.
It would be hard to do? How much would that affect the general use of starlink for users on other parts of the world?
Only two countries have demonstrated air launched rockets that can destroy satellites on orbit, the USA and Russia. There is good speculation that China has built anti-satellites satellites, but no one is aware of any actual proven test.
Here's the USA's anti-satellite rocket being launched on its one and only test:
Now, lets assume that all 3 countries decide they want to attack Starlink satellites at once with all their weapons. Perhaps they destroy 30 satellites in total. As of November 2025 the Starlink network surpassed 10,000 satellites in orbit. As for replacing the lost satellites, a single launch places 25 to 28 satellites in orbit at a time. Within the next 24 hours 25 more Starlink satellites will be launched:
In 4 days, another launch is occurring that will place 24 more Starlink satellites in orbit.
So destroying a few dozen Starlink satellites might cause a slight blip in coverage for maybe a few minutes tops in specific narrow geographic locations, but only for a little while until replacements move to positions.
Didn't starlink satellites in really low orbit? Maybe you don't need as sofisticate technology as with other satellites.
That picture of the F-15 jet firing the missile was at a satellite 300 miles up. Starlink satellites are about 350 miles up.
Didn't China demonstrate last year that a land-based launch destroyed a satellite in space?
I haven't seen it. I'd happy to look at a link if you have one.
I don't know I think it'd take you the same amount of time to Google it as it would take for me to. I just seem to recall a news article I read sometime in the last 6 months where they stated that China has successfully test launched a rocket and destroyed a satellite in orbit.
I did search it before I wrote my original comment, thats what I cited about the anti-satellite satellite effort China did. So I've already taken the time and came up empty. You're saying it exists, but I didn't find it in my original search. So I'm asked you because you encountered the info firsthand and may have a better chance of finding it.
Literally one of the first things that popped up if you search for China rocket destroys satellite.
Thank you for that link, I appreciate it. Here's what I searched, and as you can see your link doesn't show up:
Your direct link does indeed show China successfully tested it. Thanks!
Yeah that's one thing that is always been a skill is you got to make sure you search things correctly. Not saying that you didn't necessarily search correctly, however searching for China anti-satellite is not the same thing as China destroys satellite. You have different keywords different things that it references. It's one of the biggest things as an IT guy that you learn. Is how to properly format searches in order to locate the exact information that you need. And just as an FYI I also searched it through duck duck go just on mobile rather than on a desktop.
Destroying a few dozen satellites would probably kickstart a Kessler síndrome.
You'd never get Kessler syndrome at Starlink altitudes.
Starlink satellites orbit at around 550km, and get dragged by the little bit of atmosphere that is at that altitude. Each collision might make more debris, but the conservation of momentum means that any debris that gets kicked to a lower orbit will probably burn up on the atmosphere while any debris that gets kicked to a higher altitude will be smaller mass and therefore cause less damage on the next collision after that.
Collisions can still happen, but the runaway conditions where debris begets debris won't happen at those orbital velocities and altitude.
Maybe, but not guaranteed. Starlink satellites aren't very big (meaning not very large pieces if they blow up). Additionally, Starlink satellites have active avoidance systems that can "dodge" debris to a degree (its slow, but space is big). Lastly, because the pieces would be small, they'd experience more atmospheric drag and fall back to Earth faster. Whether that means weeks instead of years, I don't know.
It's hard to predict the outcome in such a chaotic event but starlink alone already does 100k+ collision avoidance maneuvers each year (can't remember the exact number but is more than one every 2 minutes). It's highly unlikely that we would be able to accurately track the newly formed debris of dozens of satellites blowing up and adjust the orbit of (potentially) hundreds of satellites in a few minutes.
Very hard to do. You need to be able to launch to the same orbits as the satellites and Starlink uses thousands of satellites, almost all of which will at some point fly over those countries. So they'd need to shoot them all down.
What about lasers?
Are these lasers attached to sharks?
I think ESA had an idea about deorbiting space debris using lasers.
