A report from analysts at CreditSights has looked at the prospects for satellite delivered ‘direct-to-device’ (D2D) telephony and broadband. The report says that for the new entrants – the likes of SpaceX’s Starlink, AST SpaceMobile and Amazon’s Kuiper – the promise of D2D is that satellite companies will be able to access a much larger […]

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has quietly registered the service trademark ‘Starfall’ through the tiny Polynesian kingdom of Tonga. The application was made on May 19th and recognised by the US Patent & Trademark Office on October 9th. The filing covers launch, on-orbit & re-entry services, spaceflight travel, in-space manufacturing services, custom manufacturing and processing of pharmaceuticals. […]

Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell has told EarthSky that one or two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth every day. McDowell’s website, Jonathan’s Space Report, is widely regarded as a definitive source on spacecraft that go up … and eventually come down. The lifespan of low-Earth orbit satellites, such as Starlink, is only about five […]

SpaceX’s next flight of its giant Starship (test flight 11) is likely to launch on October 13th. The date has been confirmed by SpaceX, and the US Coast Guard’s local Notice to Mariners talks of the flight taking place between 6.15pm and 8.22pm on the 13th (US Central Time), but the Coast Guard also lists […]

United has announced that the FAA has certified its first mainline Starlink-equipped aircraft, and the first commercial flight is planned for October 15th. This certification comes five months since the first Starlink-equipped United customer flight on the Embraer 175 regional aircraft and less than a year since United signed the industry’s largest agreement of its […]

SpaceX has filed a formal application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to launch thousands of extra satellites into very low Earth orbit (VLEO). The scheme will take some time to implement but suggests that Starlink would then be able to manage greater coverage of its direct-to-consumer connectivity. Starlink already has about 650 […]

A report from ARK Investment Management forecasts that Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship business, which carried out its tenth test flight on August 26th, is likely to be valued at some $2.5 trillion (€2.1tn) by the end of the decade. The rocket’s upper Starship spacecraft, which is designed to one day carry cargo or humans to […]

It seems that Charlie Ergen and EchoStar have decided to trim – if not exit – the satellite direct-to-consumer market. It is selling its AWS-4 and H-Block licences (c. 50MHz of spectrum) to SpaceX for $17 billion (€14.5bn), with up to $8.5 billion in cash and $8.5 billion in Starlink equity. SpaceX will also assume […]

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved SpaceX increasing launch cadence at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s SLC-40 to 120 Falcon 9 launches per year (up from 50/year) plus construction of a landing zone at SLC-40 and up to 34 first stage landings there per year. The full decision from the FCC says: · […]

Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband-by-satellite service has revealed that it now has 7 million global customers. This number is up from 6 million confirmed just a few weeks ago in June, and 5 million as of February. The works out at an average of 12,650 additional new clients a day since the 6 million mark and […]