On the Use of Mega Constellation Services in Space

Abstract Mega-constellations are being deployed to offer innovative services to Earth’s users. Our work shows how they can provide seamless connectivity to LEO spacecrafts, too, and transform them into highly responsive space network nodes, thus enabling a myriad of innovative applications. For realizing the new mega-constellation services in space paradigm, in this paper we present a complete design of the LEO space terminal, suitable to any hosting platform, even CubeSats and SmallSats. By focusing on existing mega-constellations, like OneWeb and Starlink, we derive the service performance for four terminal configurations under realistic scenarios and show that Tbit/day- scale capacity is the common case for space users, by constant data dripping. Finally, we compare this new paradigm with existing services like Ground Station Networks and Data Relay Systems. All the results show that the new approach can be potentially disruptive for the space ecosystem, by transforming each satellite into a 24/7 available node characterized by high throughput, low latency, and low cost.