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The story
On September 28, 2026, SpaceX’s giant spacecraft “Starship” reached Earth orbit for the first time on its 14th flight, deploying 26 next-generation “Starlink V3” communications satellites into orbit. The new satellites are said to be larger than previous models, with each one capable of up to 1Tbps of downlink capacity. On 5ch’s Science News+ board, posters expressed surprise at the low 330km altitude and the mechanism for direct communication with smartphones, while others worried about the impact on astronomical observation and the night sky. Still others were openly skeptical, pointing to Elon Musk’s long track record of delays: “Like he’s ever going to hit a deadline anyway.”
What’s so impressive about Starlink V3? 1Tbps per satellite, bigger builds, and lower orbits are reshaping satellite communication services
On September 28, 2026, SpaceX’s large space transportation system “Starship” reached Earth orbit for the first time on its 14th flight, deploying 26 next-generation “Starlink V3” communications satellites into orbit.
SpaceX made the V3 significantly larger than previous Starlink satellites, giving each one up to 1Tbps of downlink capacity.
Source: watch.impress.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
At that distance it's not even a meaningful signal anymore, basically noise-level — and you're saying you can make voice calls with that?
This is just nuts, I can't wrap my head around it.
Satellite phones and Starlink (broadband) aren't the same thing.
It's Starlink → ground station → smartphone/PC.
Even on the ground it can reach up to 32km, so beyond that it's the satellite's antenna gain doing the heavy lifting.
BS satellite broadcasts already cut out when it rains,
so I just can't bring myself to trust this.
For a satellite-facing base station where there's almost nothing in the way, I'd think gigahertz-range signals could get through without much attenuation or multipath interference.
Don't lie! Rain messes with satellite broadcasts all the time.
So Starlink has nothing to do with Stalin — it's basically something that talks to satellites drifting around in space, kind of like GPS, huh.
The spelling looked similar so I thought it was some kind of propaganda thing lol
But once you're down in the 300km range, you're already low enough to get shot down by a railgun, which is why Japan is feared.
Dropping the altitude barely changes the speed.
I always just add 6450km (roughly Earth's radius) to get the orbital radius anyway.
That's exactly why one orbit takes less time.
Right now it takes 4 days to pass back over the same spot, so there's no way to watch anything in real time.
Just use side-looking imaging. And it's not something meant to be watched in real time in the first place.
You clearly don't understand repeat orbits at all.
If you actually want real-time observation, the only way is to build a whole satellite constellation.
Even now Starlink satellites are swarming around so much there's zero romance left in stargazing.
The distance gets longer, so you won't be able to see it.
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
Starlink satellites previously orbited at around 550km, but V3 brings that down to roughly 330km to reduce communication latency and secure the signal strength needed for direct-to-cell smartphone connectivity. The 1Tbps figure refers to the total downlink capacity per satellite, not the speed available to any single user — a point that’s easy to misread. The thread raised the question of “why would a signal reach 300km away when even ground-based base stations don’t cover that,” but the explanation given was that a dedicated high-power antenna link connects the Starlink satellite to a ground station, with the connection to the smartphone itself happening over a separate link beyond that. Concerns about the risk of satellites falling due to the lower orbit, and about the impact on astronomical observation, are well-known issues that have been raised since Starlink’s operations first began. Opinions on Elon Musk himself were split, with some praising his technical ambition and others critical of the project’s repeated delays and labor conditions.
*This article is composed by excerpting and summarizing the 5ch (Science News+) thread “[Communications] What’s so impressive about Starlink V3? 1Tbps per satellite, bigger builds, and lower orbits are reshaping satellite communication services.”
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