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Laser equations

This section defines a “Starship-class” LiDAR Earth-observation satellite: a ~2,000 kg, high-power platform designed around the emerging Starlink V3-style, long-and-flat form factor and deployed in volume by Starship. The purpose is to establish a credible reference architecture that pushes beyond Falcon 9 rideshare constraints, especially optics aperture, orbit-average power, and very-low-orbit operations. As outlined in the following pages, this unlocks a revolution for dense, 1m structural LiDAR at global scale.

Why this class exists: Starship unlocks new satellite shapes and mass budgets

Starship is explicitly intended to deliver payloads with much larger volume and mass capacity than Falcon-class vehicles, lowering marginal cost per delivered kg and enabling designs that are “too big” or awkward for standard rideshare envelopes.

SpaceX’s own Starlink roadmap provides a concrete example: Starlink V3 satellites are described as ~2,000 kg-class, intended for launch on Starship, with per-satellite throughput far beyond prior generations.

This matters for LiDAR because the major “pain points” of a Falcon-class instrument - receiver aperture, orbit-average electrical power, and orbit altitude - are both fundamentally mass/area-limited.

Source: https://ringwatchers.com/article/ship-pez-dispenser

Reference form factor: “Starlink V3-style” long, flat spacecraft

The key architectural feature is the long, flat body optimized for dense stacking and deployment from Starship’s internal dispenser (“PEZ dispenser”). Analyses referencing SpaceX and FCC documentation describe Starship-variant Starlink satellites as roughly ~6.4 m long × ~2.7 m wide (order-of-magnitude geometry) and explicitly connect that geometry to high-capacity deployment mechanisms.

Implication for LiDAR packaging:

• You can package a much larger optical aperture than typical “cube-like” smallsat buses permit.
• A large rectangular telescope becomes mechanically plausible in a flat bus (e.g., ~1 m-class receiver aperture, potentially non-circular).

Orbit regime: designed for Very Low Earth Orbit (~250-350 km)

A central advantage of this class is the ability to operate in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) (e.g., ~300 km). VLEO improves LiDAR link budget because range losses decrease strongly with altitude, reducing required pulse energy for the same detected signal.

However, VLEO is not “free.” At these altitudes, atmospheric drag increases sharply, and propulsion is typically required for drag compensation / orbit maintenance. This is well established in VLEO literature and reviews. Strong attitude control systems are also required to offset atmospheric perturbation, though we assume this can be achieved within this much larger satellite size.

Starship-class implication: the additional mass and power margin can be allocated to:

• A beefier electric propulsion subsystem for continuous/regular stationkeeping
• An aircraft-like configuration to minimise frontal area and thus minimise atmospheric drag
• Large amounts of propellant to extend lifetime at ~300 km

Payload concept: high-aperture receiver + higher duty-cycle LiDAR

Receiver optics (baseline)

Baseline assumption: a ~1 m-class receiver aperture (circular or rectangular equivalent). This is a step-function upgrade over Falcon-class apertures and directly improves link budget via receiver area $A$ (and therefore required pulse energy and/or achievable swath in the Hancock-style framework).

Given the aforementioned desire to minimise frontal area, we need to incorporate a fold mirror to bend the optical axis from the nadir axis to the spacecraft’s longitudinal axis. This greatly increases the potential size of the receiver optics.

Power system (baseline)

The distinguishing feature of the Starship-class architecture is high orbit-average payload power, enabled by:

• Larger solar array area available on a big bus (~300m²), allowing for as much as 100kW peak power. We can conservatively select 10kW payload orbit average power
• More radiator area for waste heat rejection
• Larger batteries and power-conditioning hardware

Operational mode

Unlike Falcon-class, which tends to be constrained to burst firing (duty-cycled) because of limited orbit-average power, the Starship-class concept can support:

• Longer continuous firing windows per orbit (higher duty cycle)
• Wider swath at fixed resolution, or
• Equivalent swath with lower pulse energy (because of lower altitude + larger receiver)

Spacecraft subsystem implications

Structures and mechanisms

A 1m-class telescope drives:

• Stiffer optical bench and thermal stability requirements
• Larger baffles/stray light control
• Higher pointing stability needs

The flat form factor is beneficial for packaging large optics and radiators but increases structural design complexity (panel stiffness and alignment).

Attitude determination and control (ADCS)

Higher performance is required than for imaging-only payloads:

• Beam placement stability and knowledge to geolocate returns
• Agility to gate firing over land/forests and suppress over ocean

Thermal

High duty-cycle lasers and power electronics require:

• Larger radiators (including deployable) and thermal isolation zones
• A thermal design that treats LiDAR like a “high power payload” rather than a passive instrument

Downlink and onboard processing

Even with smart duty cycling, a high-duty LiDAR can generate very large data volumes. The Starship-class platform can allocate more mass/power to:

• Higher-rate RF downlink and optical comms
• Onboard processing to compress/feature-extract waveforms prior to downlink

Cost breakdown

We estimate that a 2000kg EO LiDAR mission can be executed for <$160M recurring cost, excluding R&D and non-recurring engineering. This is a simple extrapolation for the cost of the 250kg Falcon-class satellite against the increased mass of the spacecraft. That said, a more detailed estimate is provided below, with the same assumptions as the Falcon-class satellite. This finds a detailed approximate cost of $75.7M recurring.

Spacecraft & payload hardware

Assembly, integration & test (AIT)

Launch & integration

Ground segment & operations (3 years)

Regulatory, compliance & programmatic

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Insurance & contingency

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Baseline architecture summary

Key specifications

• Mass class: ~2000 kg
• Orbit: 300 km VLEO
• Payload: Bistatic transmit/receive lidar, 1m receiver telescope
• Power: Roughly 75kW articulated solar array, delivering 10kW orbit average power to payload