Starlink’s Laser System Is Beaming Over 42 Petabytes of Data Per Day
February 2nd, 2024Via: PC Magazine:
SpaceX’s laser system for Starlink is delivering over 42 petabytes of data for customers per day, an engineer revealed today. That translates into 42 million gigabytes.
“We’re passing over terabits per second [of data] every day across 9,000 lasers,” SpaceX engineer Travis Brashears said today at SPIE Photonics West, an event in San Francisco focused on the latest advancements in optics and light. “We actually serve over lasers all of our users on Starlink at a given time in like a two-hour window.”
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Tuesday’s talk from Brashears revealed the laser system is quite robust, even as the equipment is flying onboard thousands of Starlink satellites constantly circling the Earth. Despite the technical challenges, the company has achieved a laser “link uptime” at over 99%.
The satellites are constantly forming laser links, resulting in about 266,141 “laser acquisitions” per day, according to Brashears’ presentation. But in some cases, the links can also be maintained for weeks at a time, and even reach transmission rates at up to 200Gbps.
