Summary

Constellations consisting of tens, hundreds, and even thousands of satellites in non-geostationary orbits (NGSO), sometimes referred to as mega-constellations, are now being proposed and developed to bring affordable broadband Internet and other satellite services to the world. Hundreds of launches may be required to deploy and maintain these satellites. Even after successfully navigating through rounds of investor funding and regulatory approvals, launch capacity and delays pose a significant risk to constellations, their stakeholders, and policymakers because the constellations must be deployed within a defined period, and failure to do so has onerous consequences. This paper defines the magnitude of the NGSO constellation challenge in terms of number of satellites proposed, regulatory deployment requirements, the uncertainty in future launch demand, and the inevitability of launch delays. Sources and consequences of launch delays are identified, and risk management and simulation tools are described.

The phasing parameter F determines the relative phasing between satellites in different orbital planes and thereby affects the relative position of the satellites in a constellation. The collisions between satellites within the constellation can be avoided if the minimum distance among them is large. From among the possible values of F in a constellation, a value of F is desired that leads to the maximum value of the minimum distance between satellites. We investigate F for two biggest upcoming satellite constellations including Starlink Phase 1 Version 3 and Kuiper Shell 2. No existing work or FCC filing provides a value of F that is suitable for these two constellations. We look for the best value of F in these constellations that provides the maximum value of the minimum distance to ensure intra-constellation avoidance of collisions between satellites. To this end, we simulate each constellation for each value of F to find its best value based on ranking. Out of the 22 and 36 possible values of F for Starlink Phase 1 Version 3 and Kuiper Shell 2, respectively, it is observed that the best value of F with highest ranking is 17 and 11 that leads to the largest minimum distance between satellites of 61.83 km and 55.89 km in these constellations, respectively.