Starlink Teardown

November 25th, 2020

This is a full teardown of a Starlink groundstation antenna.

SpaceX definitely doesn’t want people messing around with the business end of that thing, as you’ll see.

My assumption all along has been that the rural broadband aspect of Starlink is a limited hangout. Looking at the size of the PCB and the phased array, I wonder if some of this wandered out of DARPA. If you click through, note the physical similarity to the phased array system in the nose of that F-16.

Also, SpaceX is charging beta users only $499 for this (including dish, router, power supply, cabling and basic mounting hardware). I wonder: What does that phased array antenna actually cost to manufacture? My guess is a hell of a lot more than $499. Obviously, the hardware is a bit of a loss leader for Starlink, but it would be interesting to know just how much that thing costs.

—

Update: $2400 Each?

Via: Business Insider:

SpaceX signed an agreement a few years ago with STMicroelectronics to manufacture the terminals, according to a person with knowledge of the contract between the two companies.

“The production agreement specifies 1 million terminals at a price of roughly $2,400 each,” said the person, who is known to Business Insider but requested anonymity to avoid retaliation. “The original timeline for that production run was end-2019, but it has been extended.”

Via: Kenneth Keiter:

Posted in [???], Infrastructure, Space, Technology, War | Top Of Page

2 Responses to “Starlink Teardown”

  1. dt says:
    November 26, 2020 at 7:56 am

    632 phased-array transceiver for $499?? Even at $2499 that’s pretty good. It makes me wonder what one could do with a firmware update. Low-cost phased-array radar? (low-cost drone defense) Wide-area mesh network? Although, in the video, I think he says transmit and receive are on widely different bands, so if that’s a hard-wired property, that precludes both applications.

  2. Kevin says:
    November 26, 2020 at 9:24 am

    Do you have any guesses as to why they glued the whole thing together in such a tight arrangement? Why mount all of the electronics to the same PCB as the array? To save money? It would seem to make the unit impossible to repair, even by SpaceX.

    Your comment made me wonder if there are potentially “other” uses for that hardware. But anyone who wants to try to repurpose it winds up destroying it first.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.