The Daily Mail (UK) reports that SpaceX announced “that its Starlink satellite internet service provider has over a million active subscribers. ‘Starlink now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers – thank you to all customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this milestone,’ the official SpaceX Twitter account wrote on Monday.” The news comes “at the end of a year in which the service, which provides low-latency, high-speed internet at an affordable cost – often to remote areas without existing WiFi – has expanded to yachts, cruise ships and RVs.”
Full Story (Daily Mail)
Tag: Starlink Satellites
Starlink Now Active on All Seven Continents
CNET News reports that with “the addition of the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, SpaceX says its orbit-based Starlink broadband service now reaches all seven continents.” The service “has just recently become active in Africa, starting in Mozambique and Nigeria, and is rolling out by the end of the year in the Philippines to begin making inroads in southeast Asia.”
Full Story (CNET News)
SpaceX Launches BlueWalker 3 Communications Satellite
SPACE reported that SpaceX “launched a novel – and colossal – commercial communications satellite into orbit late Saturday and set a new launch record for its Falcon 9 rocket at the same time.” The Falcon 9 “launched into orbit from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying 34 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites and BlueWalker 3, a prototype satellite built by AST SpaceMobile that’s billed as the largest commercial communications array ever flown in space.” The BlueWalker 3 satellite “is the largest commercial antenna array launched into space. Its mission: to test new technology designed to provide global cellular phone service directly to users from space. The goal is to fill in coverage gaps and provide seamless high-speed phone and data service in underserved areas.”
Full Story (SPACE)
Video
SpaceX launches 34 Starlink satellites and AST SpaceMobile’s BlueWalker 3 satellite to orbit from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Saturday, 10 Sept. 2022 at 9:20 p.m. EDT.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Sets New Record with 40th Mission of the Year
USA Today reports that SpaceX on Sunday “launched 51 Starlink satellites and Spaceflight’s Sherpa-LTC, an orbital transfer vehicle, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its 40th mission of the year set a record for the number of rockets launched in a calendar year.”
Full Story (USA Today)
Video
SpaceX launches 51 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 4 September 2022, at 10:09 p.m. ET.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SpaceX Launches 46 More Starlink Satellites from Vandenberg
Spaceflight Now reports that SpaceX “launched a Falcon 9 rocket with 46 more Starlink internet satellites overnight Wednesday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, completing a quartet of rapid-fire polar orbit Starlink missions from the West Coast spaceport since mid-July.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
Video
SpaceX launches 46 Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, 31 August 2022 at 10:40 p.m. PT.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
Royal Caribbean Cruise Ships to Utilize Starlink WiFi
SPACE reports that Royal Caribbean is the first cruise company “to sign up for Starlink, and framed the deal as ‘a better onboard experience for guests and crew fleetwide.’” Starlink service “will splash on to the fleet in the coming months, concluding in the first quarter of 2023 during the cruise season,” according to an announcement made Tuesday.
Full Story (SPACE)
SpaceX Offers $25K Bounty to Hack into Starlink
Fortune reports that SpaceX’s Starlink “is encouraging people to hack its system and suss out its security issues through a bug bounty program.” Starlink’s announcement comes shortly “after Lennert Wouters, a security researcher, said he hacked into Starlink and presented his findings at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Aug. 10.”
Full Story (Fortune)
FCC Approves Starlink for Moving Vehicles
Aviation International News reports that the Federal Communications Commission “has approved SpaceX’s application to provide satellite communications for vehicles while in motion.” The approval “paves the way for SpaceX to offer Ku-band airborne satcom using its Starlink satellite network.” Public charter provider JSX “is the first customer for airborne Starlink and it expects to begin offering the service later this year.”
Full Story (Aviation International News)
Starlink Reaches Quarter Million Subscribers
Space News reports that SpaceX now has 250,000 subscribers “for its Starlink satellite broadband service as it looks to move into new markets like aviation.” SpaceX is manufacturing “close to eight satellites a day,” according to SpaceX Starlink Commercial Sales VP Jonathan Hofeller. Hofeller also said, “Connectivity on airplanes is something we think is ripe for an overhaul. The expectation has changed faster than the technology has changed.”
Full Story (Space News)
SpaceX Prioritizes Cybersecurity to Counteract Starlink Jamming
Space News reported that, citing Starlink jamming “near conflict areas,” Elon Musk said that SpaceX will be “reprioritzed to cyber defence & overcoming signal jamming” at the expense of “slight delays” in Starship and Starlink V2. Musk said that the company was shifting its resources in response to jamming of terminals, presumably in Ukraine. A recent update to Starlink software “bypasses the jamming,” he added. Musk also claimed that Starlink “is the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine, so the probability of being targeted is high. Please use with caution.” That shift in resources does not appear to affect other SpaceX initiatives, including launching additional current-generation Starlink satellites.
Full Story (Space News)