One of the great concerns that Ukraine has today is that the invasion that Russia has been carrying out for 25 days is that the bombs and missiles that fall on it every day will leave it incommunicado from the world, at the expense of being razed and unable to show the horror of the war.
Russia is resolutely seeking to bomb military and civilian strategic points, so communication antennas are a priority objective. That is why the Ukrainian authorities seek help to overcome these difficulties while bravently defending themselves against the Russian advance.
This is very clear to President Volodymyr Zelensky that they are undoubtedly winning confrontation from the point of view of communication through traditional media and also social networks. The Ukrainian president himself has made his Twitter and Instagram accounts his favorite channels of communication to call for international help and make official announcements.
Weeks ago, he asked the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine and Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, to ask millionaire businessman Elon Musk for help thanks to a tweet. To extend a vital hand to him in order to keep the country in touch with the world. Fedorov asked Musk to activate the satellite internet service called Starlink in Ukraine to deal with the Internet outages they are suffering due to the continued bombing.
“While trying to colonize Mars, Russia is trying to occupy Ukraine! While their rockets land successfully from space, Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civilians! We ask him to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to turn to the sane Russians to get on their feet,” he tweeted, throwing it at the innovative businessman. A request that the tech guru agreed to a few hours later and announced through his Twitter account.
The Internet connection allows what Fedorov described as a “life-saving” communication, whether between relatives displaced and separated by a missile attack or first aid teams trying to locate an injured person. Internet access is a critical component for those in Ukraine struggling to survive the invasion.
“@elonmusk @SpaceX @SpaceXStarlink thank you very much! Starlink keeps our cities connected and emergency services save lives! With the Russian attacks on our infrastructure, we need generators to keep Starlinks and rescue services online. Ideas?” , the Ukrainian official reported on Twitter.
“Ukraine has run out of Internet and many of the accesses they had, which came from Russia, were blocked, so Elon Musk's offer was 'we are going to send them some antennas so they can put them in different cities and they can connect people' to know what is happening, to be informed, to be able to communicate with each other”, he explained to France24 the specialist Samir Estefan, expert in Technology.
Musk, in addition to activating the satellite service, has already sent two trucks of 50 satellite signal receiving kits each to install. But will the activation of Starlink's satellite internet on Ukrainian soil really be useful for Zelenski's people?
The answer will depend on the number of signal reception kits that Musk's company can send them since the Starlink network only works with those devices and not with any dish or satellite antenna. In order to receive a satellite internet signal, the user must install a specific Starlink kit consisting of a receiving antenna, which receives the signal and must be connected to the electrical current, and a WiFi router, to which that signal is sent to give access to the internet.
The system only works with Musk's own company pack, so you can't use third-party components to establish connections. In addition, all equipment is configured for specific geographies, so they are not interchangeable unless they are reconfigured. In this way, Starlink will only be able to offer satellite internet to Ukraine if it already has kits on the ground configured for that area, or has the logistical capacity to send more from abroad, something that is always difficult in a region at war.
Dmitry Rogozin, director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, criticized Musk's aid to Ukraine. “When Russia implements its highest national interests on the territory of Ukraine, @elonmusk appears with its Starlink, which previously declared itself purely civilian,” Rogozin said, referring to both the invasion and an implementation of national interests and the country of Ukraine as a territory.
“I warned about it, but our” muskophiles “said: he is the light of the world [of] cosmonautics. Look, he's chosen the side. I don't even blame him personally. This is the West that we should never trust,” Rogozin added.
Exposed antennas
In addition to the provision of satellite kits, another problem facing satellite internet in Ukraine is the high exposure of its antennas to any explosion or sabotage. Starlink specifies on its website that in order to receive the signal correctly, these devices must be placed in elevated areas free of obstacles, such as the top of a tree or a light pole. That is, in plain sight and without protections, which can cause them to be easily located and destroyed by the Russians. “There are clearly some risks associated with this and that is that the Russian government might know where the antennas are, so Elon Musk issued a statement asking to leave the antennas not very visible because seeing the antennas there, it means that there is a large population group and it could become a military target”, Estefan specified.
Also, neither the Government of Ukraine nor Starlink have given the slightest information on the power that the service will have on Ukrainian soil, or the number of satellites they will dedicate. Therefore, we do not know whether they are really prepared to give broad coverage to the regions that remain in the hands of defenders.
The difficulties for Starlink to work in the middle of a war are high. However, if it is actually implemented well and broadly, it will undoubtedly be of great help to Ukrainians, both civilians and military alike.
A huge network in space
The Starlink project aims to establish around the Earth a vast network of table-sized satellites to transmit high-speed Internet to our planet. Currently, there are more than 2000 active satellites of the company in orbit, although SpaceX has submitted documents to create a constellation of 42,000 satellites.
“The Starlink network will provide almost global coverage of the inhabited world,” but it will primarily serve rural and isolated regions that are poorly served by conventional terrestrial infrastructure,” said the satellite company that launched its first satellites in 2018.
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