What is this luminous trail that some saw pass Tuesday morning in the sky of Toulouse?
By David Saint-Sernin
Published on
“Seen this morning 6 o’clock in the sky above Saint-Sulpice (Tarn)”. “What is this trail that we saw above Montastruc-la-Conseillère? “.
Light trail
On social networks, the comments are going well. What is this luminous streak that we were able to perfectly observe in the sky of Toulouse this Tuesday morning and that we will be able to see passing again this Tuesday evening around 10:10 p.m.?
This drag is actually a train like no other!
It’s about satellite train Starlink launched by the company SpaceX, a constellation that allows you to connect to the internet all over the planet.
Surprising “show”
Elon Musk’s company has already launched several hundred and plans to launch several thousand by 2025.
It is a “surprising spectacle” that can therefore be observed regularly in the night sky of Toulouse. SpaceX indeed connects the launches.
The Find Starlink site indicates precisely the times of passage in the sky of Toulouse. If the weather is favorable, it will be possible to have the Space X train these Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
The operating mode for launches is always the same: a Falcon 9 launcher is responsible for sending the satellites into space, several hundred kilometers above sea level, in low orbit, just above the international space station, 550 km from us.
Launches since 2019
By multiplying launches since 2019, Elon Musk is in the process of creating, around the earth, a constellation of satellites aimed at delivering very high speed internet access at very low latency over the entire surface of the globe, even in the most remote areas. remote.
The project remains criticized because of the risk of collisions at this altitude and because they can disrupt observations in the sky.
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