They are not airplanes or UFOs. The train of lights that often flashes in the night skies and draws the attention of millions of people is part of the Starlink satellite network, a SpaceX project that seeks to bring broadband Internet to all corners of the world. Beyond its commercial purpose, the sighting of these artifacts in orbit is a real spectacle – although not everyone agrees with this -, which if not looking up at the right time can go unnoticed . Fortunately, an enthusiast has created a platform to know when the satellites will cross the horizon again.
Find Starlink tracks the satellites in orbit of the company led by Elon Musk and allows calculating when they will pass through a certain region . The creator of the site indicates that the platform is fed by a collection of calculations from the SpaceX community on Reddit. However, he cautions that the times may not be “100% accurate as the orbits can change.”
The website takes as a reference the “leader” of the Starlink satellite train, which leads the way for the rest of the artifacts. When the user enters a query, “the site calculates the triangle between the Sun, the satellite and the location every minute of the first five days after launch” and returns how good the visibility would be in a given area .
Find Starlink calculates the trajectory of the satellites at five days
However, the accuracy decreases as the days go by. “U na week after launch, it is difficult to predict where the satellites will be because they are assigned to their level orbit where they are less reflective and more difficult to see from the ground ,” said the creator. Precisely for this reason, the data provided by the page has a maximum projection of five days.
The Find Starlink creator, who prefers not to reveal his identity, told Insider that he started his project two years ago. The purpose of it was that he, his brother and a friend, who live in different parts of the world, could be the Starlink satellites in orbit . “Find Starlink was created three days after the first Starlink launch because I wanted to see the Starlink train and none of the existing websites tracked Starlink at that time,” he said.
The site, which currently receives millions of monthly visits, also has a live map to track the general orbital path that Starlink satellites are on around the world.
Starlink's satellite network continues to grow by leaps and bounds. SpaceX has launched 1,737 satellites, although some 1,635 are currently operational. It currently has more than 10,000 clients testing the beta version . Speeds range from 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps with a latency of 20 to 40 ms.
