SpaceX’s Starlink broadband by satellite service is now connecting more than 200,000 customers and counting across Australia, says the Elon Musk-owned business. The news prompted a slew of comments on X from India, where potential subscribers are waiting for the service to be granted permission to operate. Starlink’s numbers – as at December 31st 2023 […]

SpaceX has been accused of denying its Starlink broadband service to Taiwan in order not to upset China, and in so doing may be in violation of its obligations to the US government, reports the WSJ. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) has written to Elon Musk that multiple sources told a House committee he leads […]

Most observers in the industry agree that there are far too many smaller would-be low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite operators chasing broadband delivery and the ‘holy grail’ of direct-to-smartphone business. One consultant, Dr Tim Farrar (of TMF Associates) is blunt in saying “It’s quite plausible that rationality won’t return until the industry is in a […]

Elon Musk says that SpaceX will deorbit approximately 100 of its early version Starlink satellites which have a design problem and could fail, and not be manoeuvrable. Musk also stated that the 3rd test launch of its Starship giant rocket was about 3 weeks away. SpaceX, in a February 12th statement, said these “early version” […]

SpaceX now has a mega-constellation of some 5,400 Starlink satellites in orbit. Some of these are its Version 2 craft with sophisticated laser links and extremely rapid inter-satellite links. The 9,000+ installed laser links amount to a massive throughput for the fleet which Starlink says is 42 PetaBytes (PB) per day or 1260 PB/month. There […]

Justus Parmar, CEO of Fortuna Investments, and a close observer of the satellite industry, suggests that Elon Musk is only just getting started in terms of potential size and impact of SpaceX on satellite. Parmar’s team are already investors in the space sector, and according to a Constellations conversation with Kratos Defence, he suggests that […]

Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband-by-satellite system is reportedly set to receive regulatory approval “in the next few days” for operation over and in India. The Musk-backed satellite business has reportedly agreed to comply with a key regulatory issue to not “offer services to a bordering country,” (likely to mean Pakistan). A separate Indian company would need […]

SpaceX’s Brownsville, Texas rocket launch site, known as Starbase, is making an official request to see Starbase recognised as the correct name for the location. SpaceX is also about to be granted permission to significantly expand its facilities at the Starbase. A filing is being made by the Spaceport Development Corporation to officials at Cameron […]

Elon Musk addressed an ‘all hands’ staff Town Hall meeting at the SpaceX Starship site in south Texas on January 12th. He said that the “three Rs: Reliability, Reusable Rockets” were key to SpaceX’s success. Other news also emerged. Some mundane, others perhaps more important. The mundane was that there will be new restaurant, café […]

Elon Musk, speaking following the launch on January 2nd of a batch of Starlink satellites which included six specially equipped craft with ‘direct-to-smartphone’ capability, noted that the deployment allowed for mobile phone connectivity anywhere on Earth. However, he added: “[the deployment] only supports about 7Mb per beam and the beams are very big, so while […]