Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, has announced that his space internet project is ready for public use. The statement comes after SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit last week, bringing the total number to almost 800.
Eventually, SpaceX plans to launch tens of thousands of Starlink satellites to create a blanket around the Earth capable of beaming high-speed broadband internet to 99% of the inhabited world.
The long-term goal is to get UN guidelines picked up as national licensing regulations.
Astronomers have studied the megaconstellation threat, alerted the public about it and helped satellite operators dim their spacecraft. But some scientists are now taking another step, one that they hope will have even more significant and lasting effects.
Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has given emergency responders in Washington access to its Starlink satellites to help fight fires.
Through the satellite-based internet constellation Starlink, SpaceX plans to provide broadband internet across the globe and enable connectivity to billions of people who may not have reliable internet access.
SpaceX has already launched hundreds of satellites into orbit, though the firefighters’ use of the network is the first early application of the internet service to be disclosed.
The private space firm hopes to eventually launch tens of thousands of Starlink satellites to create a constellation capable of beaming high-speed broadband down to 99 per cent of the inhabited world.
“Once these satellites reach their target position, we will be able to roll out a fairly wide public beta in northern US and hopefully southern Canada,” Musk tweeted following the launch.
“Other countries to follow as soon as we receive regulatory approval.”
SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 6, 2020. The private spaceflight company has now launched well over 700 of these internet-providing satellites into orbit. [SpaceX launches 60 Starlink satellites and lands rocket at sea](https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-12-internet-satellites-launch)
Credit: SpaceX
#SpaceX just partnered with the U.S. military’s #Space Development Agency (SDA) to manufacture four new satellites that the Pentagon will use to detect and track missiles from space.
The $149 million contract is for four satellites, according to Reuters, which are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2022. The actual #missile-tracking sensors will be developed by a separate subcontractor and attached to the #satellites later, but the military is hoping to piggyback on SpaceX’s recent success in ramping up satellite production for its #Starlink network.
It’s the first time SpaceX is building satellites for the military.
SpaceX is developing a new satellite bus for the Space Development Agency based on the Starlink design.
WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency awarded SpaceX a $149 million contract and L3Harris a $193.5 million contract to each build four satellites to detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
The contracts announced Oct. 5 are for the first eight satellites of a potentially much larger Space Development Agency constellation of sensor satellites known as Tracking Layer Tranche 0. This is SpaceX’s first military contract to produce satellites.
SkyWatch Space Applications, the Canadian startup whose EarthCache platform helps software developers embed geospatial data and imagery in applications, announced a partnership Oct. 5 with Picterra, a Swiss startup with a self-service platform to help customers autonomously extract information from aerial and satellite imagery.
“One of the things that has been very difficult to achieve is this ability to easily and affordably access satellite data in a way that is fast but also in a way in which you can derive the insights you need for your particular business,” James Slifierz, SkyWatch CEO told SpaceNews. “What if you can merge both the accessibility of this data with an ease of developing and applying intelligence to the data so that any company in the world could have the tools to derive insights?”
SkyWatch’s EarthCache platform is designed to ease access to aerial and satellite imagery. However, SkyWatch doesn’t provide data analysis.
Picterra is not a data provider. Instead, the company helps customers build their own machine-learning algorithms to detect things like building footprints in imagery customers either upload or find in Picterra’s library of open-source imagery.