Wondering if these satellites follow a fixed path. If so, and there are few enough of them, the nextgen land-based optical telescopes will just have to factor this into scheduling.
Has SpaceX said anything about the paths they will follow? Can they change mid-deployment?
They all have Xenon thrusters and can move, however will do so only when needed to dodge other satellites or debris. Changing their orbit significantly is prohibitively expensive.
You can see the general pattern in a really cool webgl animation on the main site: https://www.starlink.com/
Interestingly (if somewhat unfortunately), this is already done for some radio telescopes. Some satellite down-links are strong enough to damage the receivers, so their visibility has to be taken into account when considering what frequencies to observe at what times.
aeternus|6 years ago
You can see the general pattern in a really cool webgl animation on the main site: https://www.starlink.com/
autocorr|6 years ago