>>11838784>which the UK want after being kicked out of Galileo.Honestly, it's not an entirely bad concept. The question is can the handful of satellites already in orbit do it, when it is impossible to physically change the hardware?
- The main thing needed is an atomic clock on board for sufficient precision. Given how useful that is in general, and how much smaller they are these days, it's likely they already have one on board.
- A nav constellation only needs like 30-40 satellites, and a barely started mega-constellation should be plenty if they're distributed well enough. (as opposed to Starlink with a few gaps remaining until another few launches)
- It needs a transmitter which can be set to an appropriate frequency that might not have been intended at launch. Who knows, but it's likely that a modern transmitter can be sufficiently adjusted, especially in a broadband comms satellite.
- It needs to stay up long enough before having to be replaced. Starlink is intentionally low enough to automatically decay in 5 years, OW is higher. By the time they de-orbit, Starship should have slashed the price of getting new ones up, so they just need the capability to build replacements fast enough. There's probably a few already sitting in a warehouse waiting to be launched.
So yeah, that may be one of the few things that the OW stats could be sensibly re-purposed for.
