After the launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket into space, Elon Musk now seeks to further his technological influence by even more ambitious means.
Since 2016, Musk has been pursuing the idea to launch a series of several thousand satellites that would work to provide low cost Internet access across the globe.
This project has been referred to in documents as project Starlink.
However, according to The Guardian, SpaceX is not the first company to propose an Internet-via-satellite system.
“The system is designed to provide a wide range of broadband and communications services for residential, commercial, institutional, government and professional users worldwide.”
With the plan to launch roughly seven thousand satellites for global coverage, Musk seeks to utilize a grouping of approximately 800 that would function to provide complete coverage to the United States with low latency and high bandwidth (about one gigabyte per second per person).
These satellites would be launched and maintain a low orbit to allow the low latency they have compared to wired Internet speeds.
The satellites would orbit at altitudes ranging from 700-800 miles above the Earth, whereas the Hughesnet satellite network operates at an altitude of 22,000 miles.
With these satellites so high in the atmosphere, they would be able to provide service to a large area.
According to the proposal that was submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a single satellite would be able to provide effective service to a circular area with a radius of approximately 660 miles (total area of about 1.36 million miles).
The sheer number of satellites would be able to solve many of the issues that come with satellite Internet.
Each satellite would be within range of each other’s cone of influence and overlap to provide strong Internet access to the consumer that would be similar, if not better, than geostationary satellite methods of Internet distribution from the past.
With the aim to be both cheap and globally available, this could bring the Internet to many places that still receive bandwidth equivalent to speeds from the early days of the Internet at less than two megabytes per second.
In fact, Thursday, Feb. 22 this year, the first two demo satellites were launched into space. The two satellites, named Tintin A & B, are now in successful communication with stations on earth.
Though two will not be enough for the entirety of the United States, let alone the world, SpaceX plans to continue launching satellites from now up to 2024 to serve as an additional revenue source for funding missions to Mars.
Ambitious as ever, Musk is working toward providing a competitive environment for Internet service providers (ISP).
With the FCC’s judgement on net neutrality laws, such a project is sure to prove immensely profitable in an ISP-controlled Internet environment, should Musk’s plans succeed.
