Testing EME from SpaceX Satellites

Video transcript

Footage: A man wearing a blue Telstra-branded cap and jacket stands on a remote beach on the Great Ocean Road. He is surrounded by testing instruments on a table and is speaking directly to camera. 

Mike gestures to the instuments: Hi, it's Mike from Telstra. Now, if you're in remote Australia or on the Great Southern Beaches, like we are off the Great Ocean Road down here in Victoria, you might be in an area where the terrestrial mobile coverage doesn't quite make it.

But if you've got the right device, you can generally connect to one of the satellites that we've got with SpaceX over the Starlink network.

So what we're going to do today is actually show you how that works.

Now, without coming in, what we're doing is we're sending signals from two different devices. We're sending signals between our two devices connected up over SpaceX.

We can look at the uplink through this spectrum analyzer and through the horn antenna over here and the spectrum analyzer, which is an Anritsu -that's got a very sensitive receiver. We can actually receive and look at what the satellite signals look like.

So that's Part 1. That's what we're going to show you today.

Footage: We cut to Mike showing two different phones (iPhone 14 and Samsung S25 Ultra). 

Mike (pointing to S25 Ultra): I've got a mobile device here that's a test device. We're using SpaceX. Now, I don't know if you can see, but I've got "SpaceX test" typed onscreen. I'm going to send that to another mobile device here (iPhone 14) and we're going to see what happens on the spectrum analyzer.

Footage: Close-up of mobile phones. 

Mike: So when I hit send on the spectrum analyzer, we should see an instantaneous blip when I hit the send button. Let's see how long it takes to send. 

Footage: Close-up of spectrum analyzer. 

Mike: We just saw a signal go. Then you just saw a couple of blips on the spectrum analyzer. Now what I'm going to have a look at over her. We're going to have a look at it, we just heard it go.

Footage: Close-up of laptop recording data followed by Mike standing on beach speaking to camera.

Mike: I want to show you this. This is the transmit power, 23 DBM. Now that's the highest transmit power the mobile phone can run at. You know, some people ask whether the mobiles power up beyond what they normally do. This is the Samsung Galaxy S25. It's running at the maximum power, which is 23 DBM. What that means in layman's terms, that's about a quarter of one Watt. So think of a little torch globe that you might buy from Officeworks. That's 2 watts. It's 8 times lower than that. That's a quarter of a Watt. So it's very low power.

And we've instantaneously sent a message over SpaceX using the Starlink Leo set configuration. So that's a very quick demonstration of how the mobile is sending a signal, but only up to the maximum power.

So let's see if we can send some messages and show you what they look like on the spectrum analyzer. So Andrew, if you come over here, I'm going to shelter this.

Footage: Close-up of spectrum analyzer with data.  

Mike: At the moment, we're not seeing much, but I'm going to move the antenna, and we have to move the antenna so we can see a location where we start to see the signal coming up. Now you can see the signals that are coming from the satellite back to the mobile devices. So we're now receiving 2 channels and they're two of the 2600 megahertz channels that we've got from Telstra connected up over SpaceX.

Now that's the receive signal that we've got here on the ground, very, very low. And we're measuring levels that are over minus 110 DBM.

Footage: Close-up of mobile phone - typing in "SpaceX test" and sending to second mobile phone. 

Mike: But if we go and try and send a signal, and I'll go back to my mobile phone, if you want to have a look at the phone, Andrew, you can see some of the signals we've been test sending. I'll go "SpaceX test" and I'm going to send that to this device and we'll hit send.

Footage: Close-up of spectrum analyzer with data. 

Mike: Now we'll see what happens. And we can see, well, we're going, we can see the mobile satellite activity. I just saw a little bit more coming in on this channel. And in fact, it's come up as mobile SpaceX test.

Footage: Mobile phones, side-by-side - both showing "SpaceX test" on their screens. 

Mike: So if I put the 2 phones together, let's see if we can see what we sent. We sent "SpaceX test" and we've received "SpaceX test".

Footage: Remote beach scene. 

Mike: So that's a wrap from the really remote beach away from terrestrial coverage. I hope you've enjoyed us demonstrating how you can connect up over SpaceX using the Starlink satellite network.