Starlink takes flight: high-bandwidth communication for scientific ballooning

Abstract

Scientific balloon missions have long been constrained by limited-bandwidth communications, which restrict real-time telemetry, data transfer, and monitoring. In 2023, the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) became the first scientific balloon mission to successfully integrate and use SpaceX’s Starlink, enabling high-speed, low-latency communications from the stratosphere. With Starlink, SuperBIT achieved data-transfer speeds ranging from 1 Mbps to over 100 Mbps, with an average file-downlink speed of 16 Mbps, before the Starlink antenna failed eighteen days into the flight. In this paper we discuss the implementation and performance of Starlink on SuperBIT in detail, covering the engineering challenges, from antenna installation and networking to power and thermal management, and the strategies used to overcome them. We analyse Starlink’s performance at mid-latitudes, correlate it with the diurnal thermal environment, and discuss its degradation and eventual failure. Finally, we explore the steps required to make Starlink a standard tool for balloon-borne research and to improve connectivity for future missions such as GigaBIT.