KEY POINTS

  • Starlink’s system is a closely-guarded secret of the company
  • Researchers sought the help of Starlink but the company did not any of the signal structure
  • The researchers had to start from scratch

Ateam of researchers at the University of Texas uncovered a top secret of Elon Musk‘s Starlink satellite internet service when it successfully reverse-engineered its signal to work like a global positioning system (GPS).

Over the past two years, Todd Humphreys and his team at the University of Texas Austin Radionavigation Lab, have been reverse-engineering signals from Starlink internet satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) to ground-based receivers.

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