SpaceX has launched another bunch of satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket designed to beam high-speed Internet signals down to Earth. The U.S. government gave them a green signal for their massive endeavor on Thursday.
This was a remarkable move and is undoubtedly one of the most notable landmarks for chief executive Elon Musk, who aims to put 12,000 small satellites into Low Earth Orbit, connecting various rural and developing parts around the globe to the Internet. In the statement released Thursday, the FCC said it was the first approval of “a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of Low Earth Orbit satellite technologies.”
The instructions were given weeks after SpaceX rocketed demo satellites, Tintin A and Tintin B, into orbit to test the concept. SpaceX’s first satellites are expected to come online next year.
The satellites that currently orbit around the Earth are high above it, approx 22,000 miles, and as a result, are slow and sluggish. Musk wants to solve that problem by launching satellites into Low Earth Orbit, lower than 1,000 miles up. But those satellites can’t provide enough coverage, which is why SpaceX wants to launch thousands of them.
This is great news for people because now they do not need to build unnecessary costly broadbands for a handful of people. Instead, internet service providers could build towers that receive signals from SpaceX internet satellites and then beam those signals to customers.
