(rocket engines blasting)
From the moment a rocket lifts off
it is tracked and monitored.
(rocket engines blasting)
All vital performance characteristics
are relayed back to the ground via telemetry.
(upbeat music)
At huge distances a probe must be able to communicate.
On Earth to pick up these signals we use parabolic dishes,
they range in size from small domestic units
for television reception,
to the giants of the Deep Space Network.
Without these almost any space flight would be pointless.
(upbeat dynamic music)
(sizzling explosion)
(upbeat dynamic music)
The very first artificial satellite, Sputnik,
was designed with four whip antennas
and two radio transmitters.
Soviet engineers saw its main function
is announcing to the world that it was there.
(rocket engines blasting)
It transmitted a continuing series of beeps.
Ham radio operators around the world
could detect the signal.
Very few realized that the beeps varied in duration
according to the temperature and pressure within the sphere.
The signals could also be analyzed for clues
to the ionosphere's electron density.
Roger, the clock isn't operating.
We're on the way.
Soon cosmonauts and astronauts
were orbiting the planet.
When John Glenn made the Mercury Program's
first orbital flight, 18 different tracking
and communications posts were set up
along the spacecraft's ground track.
As well as local staff, NASA provided each ground station
with its own capsule communicator, a flight engineer
and a flight surgeon.
Special tracking ships were deployed to maintain
communications and monitor telemetry while the spacecraft
was crossing the ocean.
But even so the network had blind spots where the spacecraft
was out of reach.
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For the Soviets communication was even more difficult.
During their early space flights
there no tracking ships and their terrestrial stations
were all in the Soviet Union.
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When the Soviet Union launched Leunig 1 in 1959,
it was intended to hit the moon.
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It missed and became the first craft to achieve solar orbit.
Because it required special tracking infrastructure
and was not monitored outside Russia,
many in the United States refused to believe
that the spacecraft had even been launched.
At the time the world's largest radio telescope
was the Mark I installation at Jodrell Bank in the U.K..
Soon, the Russians began sending detailed information
about finding their probes to Jodrell Bank
as a means of independently verifying their missions.
In the early days of the Space Race, the Soviet Union
had big plans for deep space missions.
In 1959, construction work began on the Pluton facility
in the Crimea.
(telescopes whirring)
Though the Soviets did not enjoy the financial resources
of the United States, they were not lacking in enterprise.
The Pluton receiver consisted of eight dish antennas
welded onto pieces from the hulls
of two war surplus submarines.
They were mounted on a steerable frame
made from the truss work of a railway bridge.
To point the dishes with accuracy,
the designer, Yevgeni Gubenko, employed the mechanism
from the gun turret of a scrapped battleship.
The system worked well and remained in service till 1978.
(helicopter blades whirring)
It had become clear to the space powers
that communication support for low Earth orbiting satellites
was very different to that needed for probes
traveling into deep space.
Deep space missions require much larger, more sensitive
dishes with powerful transmission capabilities.
Yet these probes' position in the sky
changes more due to the Earth's rotation
than it does because of the craft's speed.
So while the dish has the point with great accuracy,
it does not have to move very rapidly.
Satellites in low Earth orbit pass close,
so a smaller dish is adequate,
but it must move rapidly to maintain a precise focus
on its target craft.
In the United States corporations were taking an interest
in a huge new type of satellite.
Researchers were interested in using an orbiting balloon
to relay radio signals across continents.
Two, one, zero.
(rocket engines blasting)
Project Echo launched
its first inflatable satellite in 1960.
(rocket engines blasting)
President Dwight Eisenhower speaking.
A telephone call from President Eisenhower
was relayed from Washington to California
by bouncing signals off the balloon
which acted as nothing more than a reflector.
In 1962 U.S. phone company, AT&T built Telstar,
it was the first electronic relay satellite.
(rocket engines blasting)
Launched by NASA in July, 1962,
Telstar was the first commercially funded satellite.
(futuristic music)
Europeans tuning in to see President Kennedy,
got baseball and then the presidential press conference.
I understand that a part of today's press conference
is being relayed by the Telstar communication satellite.
Then French singer Yves Montand
sang a song to the U.S.
(Yves Montand singing in French)
As far as it went, it was a success,
but Telstar's low orbit meant it was only available
for 20 minutes, every two and a half hours,
and Telstar's life was cut short
as a result of the cold war.
Both the Soviet Union and the United States had been
detonating thermo nuclear weapons above the atmosphere
to determine whether this was a viable
anti-missile strategy.
(rocket engines blasting)
(missiles exploding)
From tests in the Pacific they discovered
that an immense pulse of gamma radiation
triggered positive ions and recoiled electrons
that took out electrical systems
in Hawaii and New Zealand,
destroyed at least three satellites
and damaged several others among them Telstar.
(dramatic music)
In October, 1963, U.S. President John Kennedy
added his signature to a treaty with the Soviet Union
banning nuclear testing in space.
The first telecommunications satellite that resembled
today's technology was Intelsat I,
also known as Early Bird.
It orbited above the equator at the same rate
as the Earth spin,
which allowed it to hold a static position.
It could relay one TV channel or 240 telephone calls.
(dramatic music)
It was the beginning of the space businesses'
most profitable industry.
Estimates put satellite telecommunications revenues
for 2019, a 2.4 trillion U.S. dollars.
Geosynchronous orbits make ground stations much simpler
without the need to track a target across the sky.
Today, there are at least 240 active satellites
in equatorial orbit at geosynchronous altitude's,
not all our communications platforms.
Weather satellites also find this orbit useful
having an uninterrupted view of a complete hemisphere.
(dramatic music)
The craft must be carefully spaced to avoid collisions
and radio frequency interference.
The International Telecommunications Union
coordinates the orbital slots and frequency allocations,
and satellites nearing the end of their useful life
must retain enough fuel to boost themselves
into a graveyard orbit to prevent overcrowding.
There is clutter caused by spent upper stages
and old satellites.
(dramatic music)
Another highly specialized group of communication satellites
is also stationed in geosynchronous orbit.
NASA currently operates 10
tracking and data relay satellites, TDRS.
Originally designed to provide a continuous
communications link for shuttle missions,
TDRS supports many near Earth satellites
as well as the International Space Station,
the Hubble Space Telescope and some military applications.
Similarly ISA has launched two of what will be
a group of four data relay platforms
to provide a continuous link with near Earth satellites.
Instead of transmitting to ground stations,
only visible for brief parts of every orbit,
many satellites now sends signals up
to a data relay spacecraft that can see it
for half of each orbit.
A network of relay satellites around the globe
gives continuous coverage.
All major space agencies have been experimenting
with data transmissions by lasers,
but the EDRS system is the first commercial application
of optical communications between spacecraft.
Current laser communications techniques
between satellites deliver data at 1.8 gigabits per second,
30 times greater than conventional radio links.
However, weather related problems inhibit
reliable laser connections between spacecraft and Earth.
Transmission back to the ground
is via microwave radio in the Ka band.
While this is fast,
it is still slower than the laser data rates,
but the signal can be split into several streams
and sent simultaneously.
(dramatic music)
Europe's Copernicus system is a major beneficiary
of the near real-time data available via the EDRS system.
Copernicus is an Earth observation program
relying on a series of sentinel satellites
that send back continuous streams of data about the land,
the oceans and the atmosphere.
The Copernicus program is not a limited project
it is designed to collect authoritative data
about planetary changes over the long term.
To do this the sentinel satellites
are in low north, south orbits,
allowing them to see the Earth's entire surface
every 24 hours.
This polar orbit is common
to every Earth-observing satellite,
but not every satellite has access
to the EDRS communication system,
nor do they generate the vast amounts of high resolution
data that requires it.
Most satellites following a polar track
rely on the polar receiving installations
that they pass above every orbit.
On the Norwegian archipelago or Svalbard,
the SvalSat installation has 31 radomes that track
and download data from satellites in polar orbit.
To relay the information to the outside world,
twin fiber optic cables,
each handling 10 gigabits per second,
connects Svalbard to the Norwegian mainland.
Kongsberg, the company that operates the facility
for the Norwegian government
runs a smaller station in Antarctica.
There are close to 1,900 operational satellites
in Earth orbit with a further 3,000 still orbiting
as space junk.
But there are as many as 20,000 fragments
from spent boosters and debris from collisions
that must be tracked.
Operational satellites are routinely moved when an object
approaches on a dangerous course.
If this picture appears crowded,
it is about to become a lot more complex.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission
recently gave rocket company Space X
approval to launch 12,000 new satellites
for its Starlink broadband internet service.
Current satellite internet services rely upon
a very few large platforms in geosynchronous orbit.
Typical users are in remote locations,
and while costs are coming down and speeds are improving,
latency or response time is sluggish.
The Starlink model has thousands of small satellites
in low Earth orbit cross-linked via high-speed lasers.
The satellites will be able to adjust that orbital path
autonomously to avoid collisions.
(futuristic music)
(rocket engines blasting)
The company launched its first batch of test satellites
in May, 2019.
The second group launched in November, 2019
consisted of 60 operational satellites.
(rocket engines blasting)
For one company to increase the number of functioning
spacecraft by a factor of six, cost is critical.
But satellites are being mass produced
in a flat-pack form with a single solar panel.
60 will stack neatly
within the fairing of a Falcon 9 launch vehicle.
The Starlink satellite design
is pushing the latest technology to its limits.
Links to the ground are via a phased array,
enabling a steerable beam without the need for moving parts.
Maneuverability comes from a Hall-effect thruster
using krypton as its propellant.
When released from the booster,
the satellites do not require dispensing hardware,
they are pushed away by springs
in, apparently, haphazard fashion.
At this stage they can even bump each other
and are designed to withstand the impact.
This is the highest number of satellites.
Quickly the orientate themselves
and begin spreading along their orbital path.
At this point, they can be seen in the pre-dawn
or just after sunset.
Research astronomers are not happy about the huge number
of satellites soon to be an orbit.
By 2024, there should be 11,927 Starlink satellites
orbiting at seven different heights.
The only satellite constellation remotely similar
is the Iridium NEXT system with 66 satellites
cross-linked via the Ka band.
They're designed to provide global cellphone coverage,
and in 2018, the Iridium company finished
the replacement of all its first-generation spacecraft.
(futuristic music)
The upgrade costs the Iridium $3 billion.
For 200 times more satellites,
Space X has budgeted $10 billion.
(upbeat music)
Iridium had to pay Thales Alenia
to design and build 81 satellites,
there are spares both in orbit and on the ground.
(upbeat music)
And it had to pay Space X to launch those satellites
in batches of 10.
(upbeat music)
With Starlink, the company will take advantage
of its own drive to reduce expensive launch services.
Space X builds its own satellites and its own rockets,
so will only pay costs for hardware and delivery.
(upbeat music)
(rocket engines blasting)
Recovery of first-stage boosters is now routine,
which takes a large chunk out of launch costs,
and the protective fairings,
always regarded as throwaway items,
are now fitted with steerable parachutes for retrieval
and reuse, saving a further $5 million per flight.
(upbeat music)
What will give Starlink its edge is it's improved latency.
In most cases the system should give even better
latency figures than fiber optic connections on the ground,
let alone the half second delay built into systems
that send signals 35,000 kilometers up to
and back from geosynchronous platform.
For stock markets reliant on high-frequency trading,
microseconds make a significant difference.
(dramatic music)
Space X believes people around the world
will want the service.
OneWeb and Amazon's Project Kuiper have announced plans
to develop their own low Earth orbiting broadband systems,
but with just the smallest fraction
of the Starlink constellation in orbit,
astronomers are starting to worry.
Survey telescopes that use time exposures to map the skies
looking for anomalies like approaching asteroids
or exploding stars have recorded dusk and dawn images
marred by Starlink satellites.
Researchers from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope,
currently under construction in the Chilean Andes
have run simulations suggesting that
as the Starlink constellation takes shape,
certain observation times will be unproductive.
(daunting music)
Yet, the Starlink venture itself is still a risk.
Satellite businesses like Teledesic and SkyBridge,
both with big plans went under, and Space X leader,
Elon Musk admits that success with Starlink
is far from a sure thing.
(digital futuristic music)
(daunting music)
Communication with very distant exploratory spacecraft
are governed by different parameters.
The New Horizons probe launched in 2006 is equipped
with the most advanced digital technology
ever to reach deep space.
While its primary target was the dwarf planet Pluto,
it passed Jupiter in 2007
for a gravitational boost to its speed.
At Jupiter, a mere 2.3 billion kilometers from Earth,
it transmitted images at 38 kilobits per second,
that's slightly slower than an old acoustic telephone modem.
At these distances signal strength from New Horizons
was weak, and only the 35 and 70 meter dishes
in NASA's Deep Space Network were useful receivers.
Even so the data rate was slow to deliver a coherent signal.
(futuristic music)
Sending commands to the spacecraft
is an exacting process,
all instruction code is thoroughly reviewed
by different teams before being tested on a simulator.
(futuristic music)
Only then are they sent to the spacecraft.
(futuristic music)
Because the environment around Pluto
was so poorly understood, controllers on the ground
relied on preliminary images returned by the spacecraft
to make a hazard search.
Distant encounter observations
commenced seven months before its close pass.
(futuristic music)
As New Horizons approached Pluto in 2015,
it had at least 16 different science objectives
along with spacecraft control
and data management procedures, all preprogrammed.
There could be no last minute corrections.
The spacecraft was traveling
at more than 49,000 kilometers per hour
and signals from Earth took close to four and a half hours
to reach the New Horizons probe.
(futuristic music)
During the critical close approach,
there was a 22-hour radio silence because the spacecraft
could only make its scheduled observations
with its high-gain antenna angled away from the Earth.
(futuristic music)
Everything was committed to the eight gigabytes of storage
in the primary data recorder.
To retrieve that data took 16 months.
At a distance of 4.7 billion kilometers, the New Horizon
data rates were down to two kilobits per second.
(futuristic music)
Only the 70 meter dishes in NASA's Deep Space Network
could detect the signal and they could not work exclusively
with New Horizons.
(futuristic music)
New horizons kept going into the icy debris field
known as the Kuiper Belt.
Even as it was still transmitting data
from its Pluto encounter, engineers on the ground formulated
a series of course adjustments
that would take it past object, MU69.
The first time a probe was targeted at a body
unknown when the craft was launched.
(futuristic music)
In January, 2019, New Horizons has encountered
the Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth,
formerly known as Ultima Thule.
At a distance of 6.6 billion kilometers,
data from the spacecraft took six hours and seven minutes
to reach Earth, and the data rate
had dropped to 500 bits per second.
It's still trickling in.
(futuristic music)
Finally, the most distant probe is Voyager 1.
It was launched in 1977 and is now outside the Solar System
at a distance of 22 billion kilometers.
The probe transmits data as it is registered,
and the Deep Space Network tries to gather
at least 16 hours per day of the data stream
that comes in at 160 bits per minute.
This is roughly equivalent
to a telegrapher sending Morse code.
(Morse code beeping)
(upbeat dynamic music)