[dghughes]

From what I understand Starlink satellites do not communicate between each other yet, maybe that's outdated info. I know there will be inter-sat comm eventually. But they are 500km in altitude and the atmosphere is 100km so they only have about 400km of vacuum from obit to Earth stations. So it's a 1,000km round trip and then through ground stations, fibre cabling.

[jsjohnst]

> From what I understand Starlink satellites do not communicate between each other yet, maybe that's outdated info.

It’s always been wrong. By design the Starlink satellites communicated with each other. Too cost prohibitive and infeasible in other ways to have a ground station covering every satellite.

[PeterisP]

While the long term plan was for Starlink satellites to communicate with each other, only the last four batches of v1.5 satellites have the actual hardware to do so, and the vast majority of Starlink satellites in orbit right now are only able to talk with ground stations and do not have the inter-satellite laser links.

[hunterb123]

You phrased it like it's no longer the long-term plan, but your next sentence indicates it is being progressed to. Older starlink sats without this laser link will eventually fall and burn up and be replaced.

[dghughes]

Yes but I think the plan is to have any satellite that is over a ground station to be the relay for others. Send up to a sat then sat to sat via laser and then down to the ground.

I'm curious how far each satellite is from the other, do they need line-of-sight. And how much it adds to latency since signals received and sent have to go through networking equipment within each satellite.

[jsjohnst]

> do they need line-of-sight.

Yes, they do.

> And how much it adds to latency since signals received and sent have to go through networking equipment within each satellite.

Negligible vs the impact “speed of light” (aka distance) already has added to the latency.