Cold Kitties Love The Heat From SpaceX’s Starlink

As one Starlink user found out, the warmth from outdoor satellite dishes might be attracting some feline friends this winter.

The satellite internet service, which has shipped over 100,000 terminals in 2021 alone, might have a curious problem on their hands. A Twitter user by the name of Aaron Taylor tweeted out a photo of a group of cats huddled together on top of a Starlink dish, surrounded by snow. Sources note that the issue may be with the Starlink’s “Snow Melt Mode,” a feature which launched in 2020. This mode prevents the build-up of snow on the Starlink by using its self-heating capacities. Less snow means less signal interference, but apparently, comes with more cats.

Even if the dish was attracting local strays, in Taylor’s case, he noted the cats have access to a heated cathouse and “..come and go as they please.” As we all know, cats like to do what they want, when they want, on their own terms.

There’s a question of possible damage to the device and a blocked signal, which Taylor noticed to some extent. There appeared to be some performance issues while the cats were on top of the device, however service wasn’t completely rendered useless.

In order to prevent animals from damaging any Starlink equipment you have, it’s advised to install the satellite dishes in hard-to-reach places.