Elon Musk’s Space Exploration rocket company has received another major endorsement. NASA is awarding it a $178 million (€151.1m) launch contract to send a mission – the Europa Clipper – to one of Jupiter’s moons. The news will not affect SpaceX’s imminent start of its Starlink broadband-by-satellite service, but it shows that NASA believes that […]
A report from aerospace engineer Michael Volle says that SpaceX’s Starlink initial ‘broadband by satellite’ low Earth orbiting constellation is almost completely deployed in space. Volle says that the Starlink system has just to fill four remaining orbital planes, commented: “The satellites destined for those planes are currently heading to them. Everything will [have been] […]
Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband by satellite service is planning to use Indian manufacturers to build its customer antenna and user modems and terminal devices. Starlink is expected to launch in India in 2022. “SpaceX is excited to find ways to work together with the Indian industry for manufacturing products for its Starlink devices,” said Matt […]
The value of DTH broadcasting is common knowledge, but there’s an enormous market elsewhere in the satellite industry. The ‘downstream’ segment is covered in a major report from Euroconsult. With the broadcast element,
Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband-by-satellite system has been approved for activity in Mexico. Users can access the technology from October 28th and the licence will run for 10 years. Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT) received the Starlink application on April 2nd this year and the licence was granted on May 28th. The system must be operational […]
A Californian motorist was stopped and issued a penalty ticket issued for using a Starlink dish mounted on the car’s front hood. The driver was stopped by California’s Highway Patrol (CHP). The car, a Prius hybrid, had one of SpaceX’s Starlink ‘pizza sized’ dishes along with its connecting cable running across the front window and […]
Russia’s Roscosmos space agency says there’s a risk that a SpaceX Starlink satellite will get “dangerously close” to Russia’s Progress MS-17/78 cargo craft. Progress MS-17/78 was launched on June 29th aboard a Soyuz-2.1a rocket and is due to arrive at the International Space Station in the early overnight hours (GMT) of July 2nd. The decommissioned […]
June 30th saw a routine SpaceX launch lifting 88 smaller satellites into orbit on its Transporter-2 special flight. The Falcon 9 rocket booster landed some 10 minutes later back onto its concrete launch pad. It was yet another success for the Elon Musk concept of reusable rockets. But the news was somewhat overshadowed by a […]
Elon Musk, writing on Twitter on June 25th, said that all 72 orbital planes – that is the route his Starlink satellites take when circling the planet – will be active in August. He added that global coverage will then be activated except for the polar regions which will take a further six months. This […]
Heatwaves across certain US states have thrown up problems with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband by satellite system. Reportedly, Starlink’s pizza-sized antennas are over-heating under the summer sun and closing down. Meanwhile, Starlink OTT Gwynne Shotwell says that its global service will be in place by around September. As to the temperature problem, Starlink was exacerbated in […]