The 10-Year Satellite Forecast

coondoggie writes "When it comes to satellites sometimes less is more. In the next ten years the government expects to see fewer but ever larger satellites flung into space. Specifically, the folks who monitor such things, the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), said in a draft report today that an average 20.8 satellites could be launched from 2009 through 2018, a decrease of one satellite when compared to the 2008 forecast of 21.8 and the 2007 forecast of 21.0 satellites per year. Actual launches per year were above 20 for the first time since 2002 and the highest total since 2000, with 23 satellites launched in 2008. As for the weight, the group said there has been steady growth in satellite mass since 1993 and the trend will continues as satellite mass is expected to remain near or slightly above 100,000 kilograms (220,400 lbs) forecast for the coming years with an all-time high of nearly 116,500 kg (257,000lbs) in 2009, the COMSTAC report stated."

Comments

More tacos!

[plover]

So the prediction is for bigger satellites, and more tacos! Who can argue with a forecast that?

Congestion

[Smivs]

OK, I know there's a lot of room up there but surely some of the most desirable real estate (geosychronous orbits etc) must be getting a bit crowded by now. How long till someone realises we need to start removing some of the 'clutter' (old, defunct satellites) to make way for the new. Or do they assume that they will just fall to Earth, or drift off into space?

Re:Congestion

[MichaelSmith]

Congestion in geosynchronous orbit is definitely a problem for bandwidth. Satellites rely on tight beams to save on frequencies. But as has been pointed out previously, space is big. Really, really big.

GSO has a radius of 42,164 km. And a circumference of 132479 km. So if you had a bird every 10km there would be space for 13247 of them, which sounds pretty good to me.

Re:Congestion

[2Y9D57]

At end-of-life, geostationary satellites are moved into a higher orbit to make way for new ones.

Re:Congestion

[arielCo]

AI was about to say that at roughly 264,000 km in length the geosynchronous orbit is not likely crowed, but I did my homework, and unbelievably in densely populated longitudes (yes Europe, I'm looking at you), there are disputes on orbit allocation. Since a lot of satellites are operated by private companies and leased internationnaly, I guess the issue lies mostly with government agencies.

Re:Congestion

[camperdave]

Or do they assume that they will just fall to Earth, or drift off into space?

Actually, they do get rid of old satellites. These days many satellites are built with small rockets that are used to de-orbit them at the end of their useful life. Alternatively, they are boosted into a higher "graveyard" orbit.

Re:Congestion

[Bakkster]

This is a possible application of all the anti-satellite and anti-anti-satellite technology coming out of the U.S. and China as of late. Blow them up. Hell, why not?

Because then, instead of being a little congested with big debris that you can track and moves in a known path, you get a bunch of small debris, in erratic orbits, that you might not be able to track. Steering them into a higher orbit, or back into the atmosphere is much better.

Re:Congestion

[arielCo]

Well, it's not so much about linear spacing as angular elbow-room. Considering the 1-dB beam width at 14 GHz is around 0.7 degs, you could have ~500 orbital slots assuming they're all on the same frequency (no reusage). Still, you'd have some 500 km for each, enabling you to can cram some more with the reusage thing-y.

Re:Congestion

[digitalchinky]

Generally they move them out of their parking slot once the propellent hits vapour and someone else moves right on in. The interesting thing is that there is no barrier to entry. For less than a thousand USD you can buy enough kit on ebay to run your own *ahem* pirate E1(2/3/4) and chances are you'll never get caught. The owners might not like it, but at worst they'll just run a CW spike up and down your energy lobe. It's not as though they can actually pinpoint where you are with any great accuracy.
In my previous life working for 'the man' (both military and as a civilian) I used to do technical signals analysis of pretty much anything in space that could radiate energy. Some interesting and crazy stuff out there. Imagine your bog standard E1 filled full of V.26 modems sending teletype - People aren't just keeping DOS around for stuff, they are also keeping their 1960's tech going strong as well, they modernize it a bit, but it's all still out there.

FDM's, the odd bit of morse code, but then there are TDMA systems all over the shop, those buggers are a bit harder to work with, I never met anything much more challenging than that though.

Re:Congestion

[Anonymous Coward]

geo satellites orbit the equator.. you can't have one orbit the "poles."

Re:Congestion

[mbone]

Now-a-days, operators are supposed to "deorbit" satellites. For geosynchronous satellites, that means boosting them up out of that orbit by a few 100 km, while for LEOs that generally means putting them into the atmosphere.

I thought that there was a formal requirement to do this, but this article indicates that it is just an informal agreement :

There is a "gentlemens agreement" to either de-orbit the satellite when in low earth orbit, or raise it to a "graveyard" orbit some 300kms above the geo-synchronous orbit of most large communications and television broadcast satellites.

Re:Congestion

[Talisman]

To further clarify this, there ARE polar orbit satellites, but, the problem is that while they are orbiting on a North-South trajectory, the Earth is spinning West-East. This makes it difficult for communications satellites because unless the orbit is perfectly synchronized with the Earth's rotation, which is difficult due to an irregularly shaped planet, axis tilt, elliptical orbits resulting in weird apogees, etc., then when the sat passes over, it's in a different spot every day. Geosynchronous orbit sats are always in the same spot spinning with the Earth at the same speed; very easy to tell your antenna to look at a fixed point in space.

So, the highly prized areas you are referring to are for communication satellites, and to a slightly lesser degree, television satellites.

North America and Europe are the two largest markets, but you're discounting Asia rather heavily.

To optimize the satellite's placement in relation to population density, you'll find sats towards the West side of the Atlantic, over the equator, serving the eastern seaboard of the U.S. along with the eastern part of South America and the Caribbean. Sats over the Atlantic towards the East will service western Europe and western Africa. Sats placed over the Indian ocean will service Southeast Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and western Australia. Sats over the Pacific will service East Asia (China, Japan) and the eastern seaboard of Australia, along with the west coasts of North and South America.

There is some overlap. For example, I can tune into AOR-W (Atlantic Ocean Region - West) or IOR (Indian Ocean Region) sats while I'm in the Mediterranean, but, I generally get the best reception on AOR-E due to it's location over the east Atlantic.

Polar orbit sats are still used, but they are not optimal due to most population centers in the world being near the equator, and you would need several sats in the same loop for 24/7 operation, as when your antenna tracked the satellite falling off the southern horizon, it would need another sat rising in the north to retune to.

This isn't a prob for the geosynch'd sats.

Re:Congestion

[Muad'Dave]

Go here. Read deeply.

Re:Congestion

[Abcd1234]

oO

Jebus. Of course they orbit. They just happen to have an orbital velocity that matches the rotational velocity of earth.

The pico satellites sound interesting

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It's interesting to see the trend of sizes of commercial and governmental satellites. The commercial sats are getting larger and outfitted with better hardware that can support more simultaneous users. The governmental sats are getting smaller and work in tandem to do their work.

Given that satellites can't last forever, I wonder which model pays off better in the long run. Does having many smaller satellites work better than having fewer larger sats? If so, could we find an optimal size or configuration of these small fries?

Or is having this many small things whizzing about going to cause trouble later on as we decide we need to add more birds to our skies? A few big birds are easier to spot and avoid than many little ones.

Re:The pico satellites sound interesting

[Chrisq]

I suppose that there are two issues that governments look at. One large satellite could be knocked out accidentally by a collision with space debris. Probably at least as important one large satellite is going to be easier to knock out deliberately by a foreign power.

Re:The pico satellites sound interesting

[Lumpy]

Commercial sat's are getting larger, but they are TINY compared to some of them up there from the 60,s and 70's are the size of city busses!

when they say "birds are getting larger" I laugh. Call me when they are as large as what they threw up there in the beginning days.

P.S. some of those monsters are still operational. I get B&W slow scan satellite imagery from some of the really old polar orbiting ones when I want to test my SSTV receivers.

I think someone screwed up the masses

[ckaminski]

We don't put many 100,000kg mass payloads into orbit anymore... if we ever have. Unless the entire shuttle counts.

Re:I think someone screwed up the masses

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's metric.

Re:I think someone screwed up the masses

[ahecht]

That's the total mass for all satellites launched in a year, not a single payload.

Re:I think someone screwed up the masses

[YrWrstNtmr]

I think they mean the total satellite mass, not just launched in a particular year.

Re:I think someone screwed up the masses

[QuantumRiff]

100,000 KG is about 97 Megagrams, or 100 Mebigrams. Damn marketing departments.. Everyone knows there are 1024 grams in a Kilo

Re:A better satellite cloud?

[KeatonMill]

Think about logistics here. How expensive is it to launch a new comm or earth imaging satellite? Then, how expensive is it to launch HUMANS to the same altitude with repair tools and all of the consumables they require to get up and down safely.

When you add the fact that the tech up there is still advancing very rapidly, I don't think there's very much benefit in trying to create these super multi-purpose birds.

And when there is (like Hubble, whose time IS portioned out as you mentioned and a replacement costs ridiculous sums of money), repairs can and do happen.