SpaceX has received the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) approval to operate upgraded Starlink user terminals. These dishes are the first of their kind that will be deployed to users after SpaceX's partial buildup of its second generation Starlink constellation, and the approval came a couple of days back. SpaceX had filed two applications with the FCC, for user terminals that are designed to operate in one place and its Earth Stations in Motion (ESIMs) that are for users who want to use Starlink while on the go. The latest application for the user terminals also shows that SpaceX plans to launch a new portable terminal with lower power.
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The latest user terminal application granted by the FCC features a new dish that SpaceX describes is for mobile use. These terminals have been collectively dubbed as fixed terminals (UT3) and they come in two variants. Each of these has two versions, one for consumer users and the other for occupational users.
UT3 version 2, the mobility version, significantly reduces the transmit duty cycle or the time the dish spends communicating with the orbiting satellites for its consumer variant. Its duty cycle is 9.7%, while the current Starlink dish, commonly called the flat dish, has a duty cycle of 14%. UT3 also reduces the maximum power sent to the antenna at 1.37 Watts and reduces the EIRP to 33.2 dBW.
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