SpaceX launches 60 little satellites

Relays are part of Musk’s vision for affordable Internet

In a long-exposure photo, a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off late Thursday at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
In a long-exposure photo, a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off late Thursday at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- SpaceX has launched 60 little satellites, the first of thousands that founder Elon Musk plans to put in orbit for global Internet coverage.

The recycled Falcon rocket blasted off late Thursday night. The first-stage booster landed on an ocean platform after liftoff, as the tightly packed cluster of satellites continued upward.

Musk said on Friday that all 60 flat-panel satellites were deployed and online a few hundred miles above Earth. Each weighs 500 pounds and has a single solar panel and a krypton-powered thruster for climbing and maintaining altitude. The satellites have the capability of automatically dodging sizable pieces of space junk.

The orbiting constellation -- named Starlink -- will grow in the next few years, Musk said.

Twelve launches of 60 satellites each will provide reliable and affordable Internet coverage throughout the U.S., Musk said. Twenty-four launches will serve most of the populated world and 30 launches the entire world. That will be 1,800 satellites in total, with more planned after that.

Musk said the satellites launched Thursday will be able to relay information by bouncing the data off a ground station. However, they lack a component planned for future versions: lasers that would allow the satellites to relay information to each other.

Musk sounded a note of caution. "There is a lot of new technology here," he said. "It's possible that some of these satellites may not work. In fact, it's possible, a small possibility, that all of the satellites may not work."

Other companies have similar plans, including Project Kuiper from Jeff Bezos' Amazon and OneWeb.

According to Musk, California-based SpaceX can use Starlink revenue to develop more advanced rockets and spacecraft to achieve his ultimate goal of establishing a city on Mars.

Musk, who also runs the electric-car maker Tesla and other ventures, said Starlink is one of the hardest engineering projects he's encountered. The satellites include a lot of new technology.

The Starlink satellites are designed to re-enter the atmosphere after four or five years in orbit, burning up harmlessly over the Pacific. Musk stressed there will be no safety issues on the ground from falling chunks of debris.

The launch was delayed twice last week, first by high wind and then for software updates. It was the third flight for this booster.

A number of companies provide satellite Internet using geostationary satellites 22,200 miles above the surface. At that altitude, the time for the satellite to complete an orbit is exactly one day and thus it remains over the same spot on Earth, as the planet rotates at the same rate.

That makes it straightforward for one satellite to provide Internet for a swath of the surface below, but current services have drawbacks. They are not available everywhere, and they are usually fairly expensive.

Because the signals travel so far, the performance can be laggy. That does not matter if you are watching a movie on Netflix, but it becomes excruciating when playing an online game that relies on fast reflexes.

The Starlink satellites will orbit much lower -- between 210 and 710 miles above the surface. That reduces the lagginess, or latency. SpaceX has said performance should be comparable to ground-based cable and optical fiber networks that carry most Internet traffic today. Starlink would provide high-speed Internet to parts of the world that are largely cut off from the modern digital world.

Because the satellites are lower, they travel faster. Thus, Starlink must provide a constellation of satellites whizzing around the planet. When one satellite moves away from one of its customers, another one must come into view in order to provide a continuous Internet connection.

Information for this article was contributed by Marcia Dunn of The Associated Press, and by Kenneth Chang of The New York Times.

Business on 05/25/2019

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