Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Weird half-true comment. Imaging satellites change their orbits, satellites operating in constellations station-keep, etc.



Station keeping is for drag, which is the only thing the vast majority of satellites maneuver for.


There are some oddities here. The least interesting is that drag is not the only reason satellites station keep and I can't imagine why you'd say it is. The weirdest is that we're actually having an argument about whether satellite mass continues to matter once the satellite is in orbit.

More interestingly, the majority (perhaps not yet "vast majority" [0]) of active satellites right now are Starlink satellites. Those things actually maneuver all the time in the interest of collision avoidance, and the rate at which they maneuver is predicted to increases as the number of satellites increase for obvious reasons. [1]

[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/who-owns-the-most-satellite...

[1] https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-conjunction-increas...




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: