First of all, thank you in advance! My question is: How comes that almost all Starlink satellites orbits are “distributed” almost evenly all around the globe but some others are literally queued one after another in super long lines? Is that some kind of “reinforcement” for intensive internet rush hours?
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A low-earth-orbit Starlink satellite can cover about a 150km radius of ground. A low earth orbit takes about ninety minutes. They come one after the other in the same orbit path (in whatever orbit display you must be seeing) so that one is rising in the sky as the other sets.
The Starlink “trains” are due to the fact that multiple satellites are launched by a single rocket. At the moment of orbital insertion, they are all in the same location traveling in the same direction with only the gentle push of a spring nudging them apart along their direction of travel, forming a tightly-spaced line. The satellites gradually spread out after launch, each making its own way to a spot in a distributed global pattern, but this takes a while since they only have an ion thruster for propulsion, and ion propulsion is very efficient but very slow.
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