Starlink : On Orbit Satellite Tracking / Maneuvers

[theinternetftw]

The operation (Operation Fill The Holes Slightly Faster Than We Make Them) continues.

By a quick slapdash query, 76 once operational satellites have left the fold to participate in the current swan dive.
(The current swan dive has been going on more or less continuously since May).

The slot status graph is now an animated gif.

70 degree sats are at drift altitude.

[theinternetftw]

Almost all the polar sats from Transporter-1 started heading down a few days ago.

The group 2 polar sats are still drifting.

The main shell is still doing its patch-holes-and-sprinkle-a-not-insignificant-amount-of-satellite-dust-on-us-from-above thing.

[theinternetftw]

As Transporter-1's polar sats move downwards, one of Transporter-2's sats is ascending.

[theinternetftw]

The Transporter-2 sat turned around and started heading the other way.  The Tr1 sats are still descending.

The first set of Group 2 sats has just started to raise out of drift.  That's the main reason I'm posting again so soon.

Here's the main shell as well. Still filling holes. Still pulling sats out of the operational constellation.

[theinternetftw]

Vis-a-vis operational deorbits: (from the FCC pdf posted here)

Satellites have been removed from operation for two reasons:

1. Unable to perform desired network functions:  When a satellite is not able to perform
desired network functions, the responsible action is to deorbit it. 

2. Satellite  has  reached  end-of-life  thresholds:   When  power  generation  or  propellant 
mass reach deorbit thresholds, the satellites are removed from orbit.

Around 100 satellites have either been deorbited, or are in the process of being deorbited in this manner. It started in earnest around 18 months after the first 1.0 launch (May 2021), and hasn't stopped since. Averaging a handful about every 10 days.

Around thanksgiving the last group of drifting shell 1 sats (1.0 L22) changed their altitude from 350 to 300km. Two that arrived a little earlier than the remaining 11 deorbited. Remains to be seen if the others join them. If so, that's it for major replenishment of this shell without another launch.

Including viz of the nascent new shells as well.

[theinternetftw]

Got a request for the per-plane slots filled graph.

[theinternetftw]

The new starlink groups need some tweaks in the visualization code to correctly show them in all the graph types I've used thus far, so I'd been putting off updating.

But I haven't had the time and it's been a while, so here are the graphs that mostly work as is. The 70 degree sats have a higher operational altitude of 572 km.

Also including another graph type I found while digging through my viz folder.  Operational sats over time.