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Stupidity About Starlink Satellites.

Posted on 17th April 2022

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I am not sure who is stupider: the authors of this article on "The Edge Markets", or the Russian government.

If the report is to be believed, the Russian government is angry with Elon Musk's Starlink because "the Starlink satellite constellation was used to guide and modify fire on the Black Sea Fleet's flagship, the cruiser Moskva". The thing is, Starlink satellites provide Internet connection; they have no capability for providing images of earth, whether optical, thermal, radar, lidar or whatever. The only assistance that they could provide in targeting the Moskva is an Internet access service. Blaming Starlink for the sinking of the Moskva is like blaming AT&T because someone used their Internet access service to read a press statement issued by the US government which was critical of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The statement in the article that Dmitry Medvedev has ordered, as punishment for their actions, the destruction of the Starlink satellite constellation located over Russian Federation territory, the special military operation zone (i.e. Ukraine) and the Black Sea basin is pure nonsense. Whilst there are geostationary satellites (which are above that same part of the earth all the time), these are necessarily above the equator (none of the territories listed by Russia lie on the equator); Starlink satellites are all in low-earth orbit, which means they cover different parts of the planet in each orbit. Destroying the Starlink satellites which at some time pass over Russia, Ukraine and the Black Sea would essentially mean destroying every single Starlink satellite. That would keep the Russians busy for some time.