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Jon Brodkin-June 15, 2021 at 8:40 PM UTC

A Starlink beta user in Arizona said that when the satellite antenna overheated yesterday, his Internet service was interrupted for more than 7 hours, which shows one of the shortcomings of SpaceX's broadband service. When the user's Internet service is interrupted, the Starlink application will provide an error message saying "Offline: Thermal Shutdown". The error message said that the dish was "overheated" and "Starlink will reconnect after cooling down".

A user named Martin posted a screenshot of the error message on Reddit. He contacted Starlink support, who told him, "Dishy will go into thermal shutdown at 122F and restart when it reaches 104F." Martin decided to pour a little water on the plate and let it cool down. He pointed a sprinkler at Dish, and when it cooled enough to reopen, "I immediately heard YouTube resume playback," he wrote yesterday.

But the Internet recovery is short-lived, Martin told Ars in a chat today.

"The repair is temporary," he told us. "When I stopped the sprinkler, [the plate] reheated, then circulated for a few minutes, and then returned for a thermal shutdown. Overheating started at around 11:30 in the morning and returned to normal around 7 in the evening... I am currently on the way. A hardware store buys materials to build a sun visor/sail around the dish to see if it will not affect the connection and speed."

Martin used the ground behind his house to set up his plates, because this was the only place where there were no obstacles. But he wrote in a Reddit comment post, "There is no shadow at all."

SpaceX officially stated that the "Dishy McFlatface" is certified to operate in a temperature range of minus 22° to 104° Fahrenheit. He said that yesterday in Topoc, a town in Martin, near the border between Arizona and California, the temperature reached about 120 degrees. Although Dishy will not enter the thermal shutdown state before reaching 122°, the plate will obviously be hotter than the air temperature.

"I think the radiant heat from the ground effectively cooked the bottom of the plate, [and] the top of the plate was cooked by the sun," Martin told Ars. In addition to the shade he is building, Martin said he is "waiting for approval to build a HAM radio tower" that lifts the antenna from the ground to help it keep it cool enough for operation.

Martin said that since last week, he has had a short power outage for several days, but the service was restored before he had time to confirm whether it was caused by the high temperature. SpaceX told users that it expects regular outages during the test, so Martin's previous outages may be due to heat or satellite availability.

According to a Reddit post two months ago, another user in Virginia experienced a half-hour outage due to overheating in a day of over 80 degrees Celsius.

Martin's post elicited a response from a beta user who also reported a thermal shutdown. "You are not the only one. My Starlink is located 50 miles south of the Grand Canyon in a remote area," a person wrote yesterday. "It has also been intermittent. It stopped one hour after the cooling period, but exited again at about 12:30. The temperature that my weather station reported last time was 103 degrees."

Three weeks ago, a user mentioned a shutdown temperature of 122°F in a Reddit post, and the user was also supported by Starlink support staff. "'That's it??' is my idea. In a 90-degree day, the roof of my house can reach around 125 degrees," the user wrote.

"Are you sure it's not Celsius?" another asked. (122° C is converted to 251.6° F.)

Like Martin, other Starlink users may have to find creative ways to keep their dishes cool when summer arrives.

As we wrote in December, the disassembly of Dishy McFlatface showed some of its thermal management components, including a metal shield covered with blue dots made of thermally conductive material that can conduct heat from the PCB to the shield .

The engineer who performed the dismantling, Ken Keiter, was interviewed by Vice’s motherboard section and told today’s story about Arizona residents:

Keiter told Motherboard that although heat dissipation was considered reasonable in the design of Dishy, ​​he could see potential problems.

"The phased array assembly includes a PCBA (printed circuit board assembly), which is adhered to an aluminum backplane. It has multiple uses-acting as a radio frequency shield, providing structural rigidity, and most relevant as the radiant heat quality of the assembly ( Heat sink) on the PCBA," Keiter said.

Heat is transferred from the circuit board to the aluminum backplane through a foam-like thermal interface material (TIM). The back plate itself is located in a weatherproof sealed cavity containing a small amount of air. Keiter said that when the backplane heats up, the air around it also heats up, transferring heat energy to the outside environment through the plastic shell.

"This is the problem: At some point, Dishy's face absorbs the combined heat energy and is dumped by the components into the backplane, surrounding air and shell, exceeding the heat emitted to the external environment," he said. famous.

Keiter said that software changes can "make the system more thermally efficient," but SpaceX may need "significant hardware modifications for commercial launches." He called it "a very difficult engineering problem with some very strict restrictions."

We contacted SpaceX today, and if we get a response, we will update this article. advertise

The public beta of Starlink started in October 2020, and there is no news about when it will reach commercial availability. But this service may be completed within a few months, because SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said that by the end of 2021, "most parts of the earth" and next year the entire earth will be able to use Starlink. Nevertheless, due to capacity constraints, SpaceX expects a limited number of slots per geographic area.

SpaceX is seeking permission from the Federal Communications Commission to deploy up to 5 million user terminals in the United States. More than 500,000 people have subscribed to Starlink, and Musk said he hopes all these users can get the service. But he also said that when we enter the reach of millions of users, SpaceX will face "greater challenges." The biggest limitation is in densely populated urban areas; rural users have a higher chance of accessing services.

As mentioned earlier, Starlink warns beta users that even if they do not experience a thermal shutdown, they should expect a "short period of no connection at all." SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said in April: "We still have a lot of work to do to ensure that the network is reliable." "We still have a decline, not necessarily just because of the satellite's position in the sky." Shotwell said of SpaceX. This service will be kept in the testing phase, "until the network is reliable and strong, we will be proud of it."

The Verge reviewed Starlink last month and found frustrating reliability issues. "Like mmWave 5G, which is also overhyped, Starlink is very fragile. Even a tree blocking the line of sight from the antenna to the horizon will lower and interrupt your Starlink signal," The Verge wrote.

As Shotwell promised, the service will definitely become more stable when SpaceX transforms it from a beta version to universally available. Even in the testing phase, Starlink provides much-needed connections for people who have no other options. If SpaceX provides reliable broadband services to millions of users, it will be successful, but tens of millions of Americans may not be able to use high-speed broadband. Tens of millions of others have to pay whatever the cable company requires because there is no competition where they live.

Compared with Starlink, the widespread deployment of fiber to the home will have a greater impact on more Internet users. President Joe Biden promised to lower prices and deploy "future-oriented" broadband to all Americans, but in the face of opposition from Republicans and current Internet service providers, he has scaled back his plans. AT&T has been lobbying against national fiber optic and municipal network funding, and AT&T CEO John Stankey expressed confidence last week that Congress will guide legislation in the direction supported by AT&T.

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