INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
"Elon thinks we can do the job with cheaper and simpler satellites, sooner," a source told Reuters at the time of Badyal's dismissal
Earlier in 2018, SpaceX launched a pair of prototype cube-shaped Internet satellites for demonstrations in orbit
Then, less than a year after firing Badyal, Musk's company launched the first full stack of Starlink satellites, debuting the now-standard
flat-panel design.In a post Friday on LinkedIn, Badyal wrote the Kuiper satellites have had "an entirely nominal start" to their mission
use laser inter-satellite links to relay Internet signals from node-to-node across their networks
Starlink broadcasts consumer broadband in Ku-band frequencies, while Kuiper will use Ka-band.Ultimately, SpaceX's simplified Starlink
deployment architecture has fewer parts and eliminates the need for a carrier structure
This allows SpaceX to devote a higher share of the rocket's mass and volume capacity to the Starlink satellites themselves, replacing dead
weight with revenue-earning capability
The dispenser architecture used by Amazon is a more conventional design, and gives satellite engineers more flexibility in designing their
It also allows satellites to spread out faster in orbit.Others involved in the broadband megaconstellation rush have copied SpaceX's
architecture.China's Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, satellites have a "standardized and modular" flat-panel design that "meets the needs of
stacking multiple satellites with one rocket," according to the company managing the constellation
While Chinese officials haven't released any photos of the satellites, which could eventually number more than 14,000, this sounds a lot
like the design of SpaceX's Starlink satellites.Another piece of information released by United Launch Alliance helps us arrive at an
estimate of the mass of each Kuiper satellite
The collection of 27 satellites that launched earlier this week added up to be the heaviest payload ever flown on ULA's Atlas V rocket
ULA said the total payload the Atlas V delivered to orbit was about 34,000 pounds, equivalent to roughly 15.4 metric tons.It wasn't clear
whether this number accounted for the satellite dispenser, which likely weighed somewhere in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds at launch
This would put the mass of each Kuiper satellite somewhere between 1,185 and 1,259 pounds (537 and 571 kilograms).This is not far off the
estimated mass of SpaceX's most recent iteration of Starlink satellites, a version known as V2 Mini Optimized
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has launched up to 28 of these flat-packed satellites on a single launch.
