Musk’s move to the Internet for all takes another leap forward

On Sunday morning, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, taking 60 more Starlink satellites with it. The double-decker rocket described by SpaceX as “the first orbital-class rocket capable of reflecting itself” has made frequent trips to bring the Starlink satellites into low orbit as SpaceX founder Elon Musk nears its target to provide high-speed, low-latency Internet access. every part of the globe.

“The first stage of the Falcon 9 landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, completing the ninth flight of this booster,” SpaceX tweeted, following the successful deployment.

The latest deployment will add to the already gigantic constellation of Starlink satellites that SpaceX has already launched. According to the latest reports, the company has now launched around 1,000 satellites and hopes to increase that number to 40,000. To put that into perspective, that figure of 40,000 will be, it seems, five times the total number of satellites it has. humans have never launched into space. SpaceX currently owns about a third of all active satellites in orbit.

Like all of Musk’s businesses, Starlink’s underlying premise is extremely ambitious in scope. The Starlink initiative is a ploy to efficiently provide Internet access across the globe through a mega constellation of satellites in low earth orbit. While large and small metropolitan areas around the world already enjoy high-speed connectivity, accessing the internet in remote areas remains a huge problem to be tackled, especially as we come to an era where the internet is slowly starting out. to be defined as a public service.

Each Starlink satellite has four phased array antennas that can handle large volumes of radio wave throughput so that signals can be transmitted to them before being targeted and sent back, hypothetically, to any position on the face. of the earth.

In February of this year, SpaceX noted that it already had 10,000 customers proving the technology was no longer “theoretical and experimental.” Several of the service’s current customers, who effectively act as beta testers, have spoken highly of its quality, although many mainstream carriers continue to doubt its feasibility and affordability.

The service is currently offered for $ 99 per month, but Musk has previously noted that as the technology becomes more robust, costs will drop dramatically year on year. He did admit, however, that the company “must cross a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year to make Starlink financially viable.”

The Starlink project has also been criticized by the astronomical community, which has raised concerns about how the Starlink satellites, each of which are quite large at around 550 pounds, could come to affect ground-based telescopes essential for exploration. space and the advancement of cosmology.

To address these concerns, SpaceX last year began installing retractable sunshades on its Starlink satellites to reduce the light reflected on them, causing them to interfere less with astronomical observations.