How does SpaceX communicate with their vehicles on orbit (and beyond)?

[envy887]

The normal concerns of radiation patterns of antennas, ... are mitigated if you can simply flip satellites to point directly at your vehicle with no customer impact.

Which spacecraft and at what time?  Real time planning is not going to be easy.

Starlink is going to be hitting thousands of moving targets in real time including inter-satellite links.

[speedevil]

Starlink is going to be hitting thousands of moving targets in real time including inter-satellite links.

Millions, unless things go very wrong.

[jpo234]

There might be a market for an in-orbit commercial data relay system for satellites

http://spacenews.com/international-ground-stations-tricky-for-smallsat-operators-to-license/

[john smith 19]

Do they have permission to use TDRS? Do they have their own tracking and communications stations on earth? What about DSN for things going to Mars-ish orbits?

USN

They use the US Navy?

[SkipMorrow]

Do they have permission to use TDRS? Do they have their own tracking and communications stations on earth? What about DSN for things going to Mars-ish orbits?

USN

They use the US Navy?

Good! I wasn't the only one that thought that.

[john smith 19]

Do they have permission to use TDRS? Do they have their own tracking and communications stations on earth? What about DSN for things going to Mars-ish orbits?

USN

They use the US Navy?

Good! I wasn't the only one that thought that.

I'm presuming he meant the DSN, who I thought was run by JPL, but some of the ownership and control pathways around NASA are for historical reasons quite Byzantine.

It's a nice demonstration that when you use low bandwidth communications every character counts and error detection becomes very important.

[ccdengr]

I'm presuming he meant the DSN...

No, he meant Universal Space Network, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Space_Network

[AncientU]

Since LEO ops are lower than the Starlink LEO constellation, the launch vehicle is closer to the sats than ground stations/customers, so distance is not the issue.  Beam steering of broadband links should cover any bandwidth needed at any point in the launch.  Interference from the plume should be downward directed, not upward.  There may be interference issues since the launch vehicle is traveling across a wide swath of territory...

Seems the basic pieces for normal communication are there, but many other technical or regulatory issues may be involved.  Would save the cost of ground station fees.

Doppler effects.

Intersatellite doppler effects and the challenge of acquisition, pointing, and tracking are required, but relatively trivial adaptations of the tech needed to steer a thousand beams at points on the ground that are moving at 17,000m/h (27,000km/h) relative to the spacecraft, or to conduct inter-spacecraft laser links to long haul data.

Since this tech removes the man from the loop, replaced by great software and state-of-the-art processors, the problem is actually much easier.  Manually scheduling passes and down-links is so last week -- like having a long distance operator route your cell phone calls...

[john smith 19]

I'm presuming he meant the DSN...

No, he meant Universal Space Network, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Space_Network

Thank you. That is a new fact I did not know before. AFAIK the DSN was run through JPL and AFAIK (possibly from studying the Kistler K1 design) it seemed civilian LV's either used their own private comms or the TDRSS network.