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By Chris Forrester
September 1, 2020
SpaceX scrapped a planned Falcon 9 rocket launch on August 30 due to weather anxiety. It is rescheduled for today, September 1st.
The SpaceX rocket will carry 60 Starlink broadband satellites from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Launch time is scheduled for 09.29 am Florida time (13.29 GMT). It will be the twelfth launch of the Starlink project.
The launch will bring Starlink’s orbital fleet to more than 700 spacecraft (653 plus the last 60), although some have failed in orbit.
However, there have been some criticisms of Starlink’s performance in orbit when it comes to actual data traffic. Starlink is currently limited to a ‘friends and family’ beta test offer for SpaceX staff. There are only a few reported ‘speedtest’ users (by Ookla) and they show a variety of download speeds between 35 Mb / s and 60 Mb / s, upload speeds between 5 Mb / s and 18 Mb / s, and latency between 31 and 94 Mb / s.
The mere fact that the range is so wide indicates that the size of the fleet is not perfect. Against that complaint is the fact that an Alaskan US user more used to 1 Mb / s – 3 Mb / s might be jumping for joy at the type of service that is being achieved. Perhaps more relevant is how transmissions could be affected by rain attenuation and problems like snow.
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