In recent months, people have reported seeing a parade of star-like points passing across the night sky. The formation is not extraterrestrial, or even
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In recent months, people have reported seeing a parade of star-like points passing across the night sky. The formation is not extraterrestrial, or even astrophysical in origin, but is in fact a line of satellites, recently launched by SpaceX, that will eventually be joined by many more to form Starlink, a “megaconstellation” that will wrap around the Earth as a global network designed to beam high-speed internet to users anywhere in the world.
Starlink is among a handful of global satellite networks currently in development (though not without controversy, due to effects on our view of the night sky). Each is designed to deploy thousands of satellites at various altitudes and inclination angles to the Earth, to connect remote and rural users to the internet.
MIT researchers have run a comparison of the four largest global satellite meganetwork proposals, from SpaceX, Telesat, OneWeb, and Amazon. They found that each network, which would comprise thousands of satellites, could beam down tens of terabits per second, filling gaps left by land-based services.
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Cynthia Barnhart SM ’86, PhD ’88 will step down from her role as chancellor and return to the faculty on July 1, President L. Rafael Reif announced today in an email to the MIT community.
During her seven years at the post, Barnhart and her team took a range of actions to make MIT a more caring environment where support is easier to find. She oversaw an expansion of student health and wellness programs, launched a campaign to prevent and respond to sexual misconduct on campus, and focused on new efforts to enhance undergraduate and graduate education.
“From the start, she has been a fearless advocate for student wellbeing, a calm, insistent force for new thinking and creative change, and one of my most trusted and thoughtful advisors,” Reif wrote to the community.