[bjornasm]

Just in case why people are wondering why cutting of internet for an arctic island is a big deal.

What many might not know is that Svalbard is home to the northernmost satellite station in the world. It is just one of two stations that can communicate with polar orbiting satellites each day. ESA and NASA as well as other civilian organisations are present there, and the station communicates with well over a hundred satellites, and are pretty vital for much of the satellites that look back at us.

[Sanzig]

To be pedantic - most places on Earth can get a contact with a polar orbiting satellite at least once or twice per day, however the number of contacts per day increases the closer you get to the poles. Svalbard is far enough north that you get lots of contacts per day. I forget the exact number and I don't have STK open in front of me to simulate it, but from memory it's something like 15 or so contacts per day for a typical earth observation orbit. This gives you lots of data and relatively frequent contacts to maximize the freshness of the imagery.

There are tons of commercial observation satellite operators that use Svalbard for downlink (downlinks at Svalbard can be procured commercially through a company called KSAT which operates the station). Ukraine has been purchasing a lot of imagery from these companies, including both optical and radar imagery. If I had to hazard a guess at a possible motive, that'd be it.

[bjornasm]

Thx, that was a huge brain fart, I meant each revolution.

[bjornasm]

Correction: not one per day, one per revolution. Since the satellites go from north to south pole while the earth is spinning, the polar areas is the inly the pass each time.

[paganel]

Most probably Russia will claim sovereignty over all of the Svalbards after the next big war and redrawing of borders, Stalin was too circumspect in not scaring the Americans into WW3 the first time when they had the chance to do it.

All that because whoever controls the North Pole controls most of the Northern Hemisphere, it’s actually one of the very few “ways in” inside North America and control of the continental United States (there were a few US geopoliticians/geographers who first became aware of that in the early 1940s).

[neffy]

I for one welcome our new Polar Bear Overlords. (Hope the Russians don´t forget their rifles when they move in.)

[mgoetzke]

Time for a Starlink backup then

[onnimonni]

You can look at the https://satellitemap.space/ to see that starlink isn't (yet) too feasible in the northern/arctic areas. Even in the Nordic countries the connections are not that great.

[partomniscient]

Its the groundstation that needs backing up and the location is surrounded by the sea.

[sunbum]

That's not how satellites work.

[red-iron-pine]

definitely not. volumes just aren't there and Elon Musk is openly in bed with dubious characters.