[Onkel Neal]

Mission 4 was a success, looking forward to the next launch. History in the making.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90458407...lite-broadband

The company’s 60 Starlink nano-satellites are delivered to low Earth orbit by a partly reused Falcon 9 rocket and gently ejected one at a time from a rack, as if it were a Pez dispenser. They bring SpaceX’s broadband project up to 242 deployed satellites. That’s about a third of the 720 the company will need for “continuous coverage of most populated areas,” as the company tweeted last May.

But while the Starlink constellation is becoming increasingly real as it grows towards a planned mesh-network array of 7,518 satellites, much mystery remains about the internet service that Elon Musk’s space-exploration firm plans to start selling later this year.

The obvious virtue of Starlink’s design, as well as that of other next-gen satellite-broadband services, is that it doesn’t send data on a roughly 44,000-mile round trip. Current space-broadband services require that journey, thanks to their reliance on satellites parked 22,236 miles up in geosynchronous orbits that keep them over one spot on Earth. Starlink’s first satellites occupy an orbit of just 340 miles up, while later waves will provide service from 210 and 710 miles high.