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With Starship in the limelight following its first orbital launch test, it can be easy to forget that Falcon 9 launches are still the core of SpaceX’s business. The company launched yet another Falcon 9 this week, carrying 56 shiny new Starlink internet satellites. These aren’t the larger V2 designs that rely on Starship, but they still pushed Starlink over a notable milestone. SpaceX now has more than 4,000 satellites in orbit.
The speed with which SpaceX has deployed Starlink is genuinely staggering. It’s the single largest satellite operator in the world, with 4,023 Starlink nodes, 3,988 of which are currently operational. Before SpaceX started launching satellites dozens at a time, there were a little more than 2,000 total satellites. Today, we’re over 8,000, and half of them belong to SpaceX.
This rapid deployment was only possible thanks to the Falcon 9, which pioneered reusability in rockets. After the Thursday launch, the Falcon 9 booster descended and landed safely on the A Shortfall of Gravitas drone ship, ready to be refurbished and flown again. This has lowered launch costs considerably, helping SpaceX cover most of the globe with satellite connectivity.
As impressive as Starlink is from an aerospace perspective, things on the ground are more complicated. After debuting with 100Mbps speeds, Starlink has slowed considerably as more users have subscribed. To cope with congestion, SpaceX recently started charging higher prices in regions with more demand. It also flirted with capping monthly usage at 1TB for residential customers. Thankfully, the company backtracked on the plan this week.
Starlink satellites stacked for launch.
Credit: SpaceX
The key to advancing Starlink is, you guessed it, more satellites. The FCC granted SpaceX a license to add 7,500 Gen 2 satellites, which are larger and more powerful than the units it is currently deploying. So far, SpaceX has launched a few miniature versions of the Gen 2 satellite aboard a Falcon 9, but it needs Starship to deploy the Gen 2 network. It’s unclear when Starship will fly again after it obliterated the launchpad during its first test with the Super Heavy booster stage.
Astronomers around the world will not look upon the news of SpaceX’s milestone with glee. Many space scientists have expressed concerns over the way megaconstellations like Starlink will impact telescope observations. Already, astronomers routinely have to discard data contaminated with satellite light trails, and the situation will only worsen as competitors like Amazon work toward deploying competing satellite networks.
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