Too hot for the net – Starlink satellite dish shut down

If it gets too hot, there’s no more Internet. This is apparently the case with Starlink. The hot temperatures in the summer in the USA do not get the satellite dishes probably.

Heat shuts down system

Starlink is having problems with its satellite internet. The satellite dishes are probably only designed for temperatures between -30 and +40. Especially in the south of the USA, where it gets warmer quickly, it becomes problematic. Currently, a beta test is running here and the first users are reporting outages. Users reported on Reddit that the system was shut down due to overheating. This affected users from the US state of Arizona, here it was 44 degrees Celsius at noon on Tuesday, and this was not even the maximum temperatures reached that day. These should still reach the 48 degrees Celsius. Other users confirmed the failures and could only with a water sprinkler for the antenna, remedy.

Small antenna causes problems

The satellite Internet Starlink is actually intended for underserved regions. In other words, exactly where the installation of other technologies is uneconomical or a connection is not possible for other reasons. It has been under construction since the end of 2019 and is intended to provide fast access to the Internet. In the public beta test, a download rate of at least 100 MBit/s and an upload rate of 20 MBit/s have been envisaged. As early as February 2021, more than 100,000 users are expected to have used the Starpink service and a further hundred thousand have expressed interest. To use the access, all that is needed is a small heated antenna that connects to the satellite, and SpaceX provides the appropriate WLAN router at the same time.

The problem lies precisely with this small heated antenna, which simply cannot cope with such high temperatures. It is not yet known how widespread this problem is. SpaceX states that the satellite key only works at temperatures between -30 and +40 degrees Celsius, but this is exactly where it gets tight in the south of the USA. Especially in summer, the temperatures there are quickly much higher. Users now want to try to get a grip on the problem with a shade dispenser, since the water sprinkler cannot be a permanent solution. Whether the shade dispenser will have an effect on reception remains to be seen. An elevated location could also be a remedy; affected users also want to try this out. Of course, beta tests are carried out to get a grip on this problem. After the test, such problems should of course no longer occur.