SpaceX's Starlink Broadband Service Will Begin in 2020: Report

[Hamartia Antidote]

https://www.space.com/amp/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-service-2020.html

A view of SpaceX's first 60 Starlink satellites in orbit, still attached and awaiting deployment, after their launch on May 23, 2019


SpaceX, the private spaceflight company known for reusable rockets and a giant, shiny Starship, will begin offering its own satellite internet service in 2020, according to SpaceNews. In fact, the U.S. Air Force is already testing it in planes.

To build the service, SpaceX will have to launch up to eight Falcon 9 rockets filled with the company's Starlink satellites, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell told SpaceNews and other reporters this week at the 70th International Astronautical Congress in Washington.

"We'll continue to upgrade the network until mid to late next year," SpaceNews' Jeff Foust quoted Shotwell as saying during a media roundtable on Tuesday (Oct. 22). "We're hoping for 24 launches by the end of the year."

SpaceX launched the first Starlink mission, a Falcon 9 carrying 60 satellites, on May 23 to lay the foundation for a satellite constellation that will ultimately number in the tens of thousands. Another 60 are slated to launch next month.

This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk used the Starlink system to send a tweet for the first time.

"Whoa, it worked!" Musk wrote in the tweet on Tuesday. Musk used a Starlink terminal in his home to send the tweet. Eventually, Starlink customers will receive a box from SpaceX to access the network, SpaceNews reported.

"Knowing Elon, he wants everything to be beautiful. So the user terminal will be beautiful," Shotwell said Tuesday according to SpaceNews.

Musk has said SpaceX will need at least 400 Starlink satellites in orbit for "minor" broadband coverage, and 800 satellites aloft for "moderate" coverage. The initial Starlink plan called for a megaconstellation of 12,000 satellites, and SpaceX recenty filed paperwork with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to launch another 30,000 satellites. The ITU is a United Nations agency that manages the global satellite radio-frequency spectrum, among other things.


Ultimately, SpaceX may not need so many satellites in orbit for global coverage. But having them available will allow SpaceX to use some satellites for customized service, Shotwell said, according to SpaceNews.

One of those potential customers may be the U.S. military.

The U.S. Air Force is testing SpaceX's Starlink technology in military aircraft under a program called Global Lightning, Reutersand SpaceNews reported. The project, which is part of a $28 million contract SpaceX won from the Pentagon last year, is testing encrypted military communications via Starlink terminals in a C-12 military transport aircraft, Reuters reported.

"We are delivering high bandwidth into the cockpit of Air Force planes," Reuters' Joey Roulette quoted Shotwell as saying Tuesday.

SpaceX is not the only company pursuing satellite broadband services. The companies OneWeb, Telesat and Amazon have announced plans for megaconstellations of their own, but none as large as SpaceX's Starlink network.

 

[GHALIB]

https://www.space.com/amp/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-service-2020.html

A view of SpaceX's first 60 Starlink satellites in orbit, still attached and awaiting deployment, after their launch on May 23, 2019


SpaceX, the private spaceflight company known for reusable rockets and a giant, shiny Starship, will begin offering its own satellite internet service in 2020, according to SpaceNews. In fact, the U.S. Air Force is already testing it in planes.

To build the service, SpaceX will have to launch up to eight Falcon 9 rockets filled with the company's Starlink satellites, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell told SpaceNews and other reporters this week at the 70th International Astronautical Congress in Washington.

"We'll continue to upgrade the network until mid to late next year," SpaceNews' Jeff Foust quoted Shotwell as saying during a media roundtable on Tuesday (Oct. 22). "We're hoping for 24 launches by the end of the year."

SpaceX launched the first Starlink mission, a Falcon 9 carrying 60 satellites, on May 23 to lay the foundation for a satellite constellation that will ultimately number in the tens of thousands. Another 60 are slated to launch next month.

This week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk used the Starlink system to send a tweet for the first time.

"Whoa, it worked!" Musk wrote in the tweet on Tuesday. Musk used a Starlink terminal in his home to send the tweet. Eventually, Starlink customers will receive a box from SpaceX to access the network, SpaceNews reported.

"Knowing Elon, he wants everything to be beautiful. So the user terminal will be beautiful," Shotwell said Tuesday according to SpaceNews.

Musk has said SpaceX will need at least 400 Starlink satellites in orbit for "minor" broadband coverage, and 800 satellites aloft for "moderate" coverage. The initial Starlink plan called for a megaconstellation of 12,000 satellites, and SpaceX recenty filed paperwork with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to launch another 30,000 satellites. The ITU is a United Nations agency that manages the global satellite radio-frequency spectrum, among other things.


Ultimately, SpaceX may not need so many satellites in orbit for global coverage. But having them available will allow SpaceX to use some satellites for customized service, Shotwell said, according to SpaceNews.

One of those potential customers may be the U.S. military.

The U.S. Air Force is testing SpaceX's Starlink technology in military aircraft under a program called Global Lightning, Reutersand SpaceNews reported. The project, which is part of a $28 million contract SpaceX won from the Pentagon last year, is testing encrypted military communications via Starlink terminals in a C-12 military transport aircraft, Reuters reported.

"We are delivering high bandwidth into the cockpit of Air Force planes," Reuters' Joey Roulette quoted Shotwell as saying Tuesday.

SpaceX is not the only company pursuing satellite broadband services. The companies OneWeb, Telesat and Amazon have announced plans for megaconstellations of their own, but none as large as SpaceX's Starlink network.

service providers should introduce safeguards so that it is free from criminals .

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

service providers should introduce safeguards so that it is free from criminals .

It wouldn’t surprise me if SpaceX eventually goes into the Skype phone type business. Imagine using a phone anywhere in the world without paying the local telephone service. All the infrastructure costs avoided.

 

[BringHarmony]

So that means no more blocking internet and phones in Kashmir?
@waz @Areesh

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-internet-service-beta-program/

SpaceX Starlink a step closer to internet service and Elon Musk has beta test details

SpaceX’s successful April 22nd Starlink launch has brought the nascent constellation another step closer to serving customers internet and CEO Elon Musk has revealed the first significant beta test details.

SpaceX kicked off 60-satellite Starlink launches with its revolutionary flat-pack design in May 2019, a mission that served as a beta test for the new design and launched “v0.9 spacecraft”. The company finalized the “v1.0” Starlink satellite design shortly thereafter and began its operational launch campaign in November 2019. In the five subsequent months, SpaceX has completed six Starlink v1.0 launches, placing 360 satellites in orbit for a total of 422 as of today. Of the 422 spacecraft launched, ~415 remain operational and a small handful have been deorbited in the last few months.

The ultimate purpose of Starlink, of course, is to serve high-quality internet to customers anywhere on Earth, ranging from the deep winter Arctic to the middle of the Australian outback – places that are fundamentally underserved. Eventually, SpaceX may seek to open service to other less challenged locations and the extraordinarily ambitious final constellation – ~40,000 satellites strong – could easily serve the needs of tens or hundreds of millions, but the initial targets will, in SpaceX’s own words, be places where internet is “unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable.” Finally, thanks to CEO Elon Musk, we have a more specific idea of when customers could begin using the Starlink constellation.

Private beta begins in ~3 months, public beta in ~6 months, starting with high latitudes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2020

The problem is familiar for users of ISPs (i.e. a majority of humans): your WiFi router and modem can be top-of-the-line but bad internet service makes the quality of your home network irrelevant. Vice-versa, a bad router/modem also makes high-quality internet service effectively irrelevant. In other words, SpaceX fundamentally needs to ensure that neither component becomes a bottleneck for performance or user experience.

Hence starting with a private beta test. New consumer devices and services – let alone something as ambitious, complex, and new as Starlink – will almost invariably have many, many bugs in the early stages of functionality. To the average consumer, internet is simply a commodity that they expect to “just work” in most cases, so that average customer simply isn’t fit to judge or constructively criticize an early prototype.

Once a majority of the most disruptive bugs and kinks have been worked out, though, SpaceX can begin what Musk described as a “public beta” as few as six months from now – Q4 2020. A public beta would most likely involve interested customers in the right geographic locations applying online and getting on a waitlist.

For now, it’s unknown how many testers those private and public betas will require. More likely than not, the private round will include around 1000-10,000 individuals, while it would be unusual if the public beta didn’t involve at least 10,000+ testers. There’s also a good chance that the public beta will gradually turn into full constellation operations, meaning that anyone (within reason) who wants Starlink internet would be able to join the network fairly quickly. Stay tuned for updates as SpaceX – launch by launch – gets ever closer to the goal of delivering customers internet from space.