Elon Musk's company launches two prototype satellites it hopes will be the first of thousands more beaming internet access anywhere in the world.
After days of delays, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying two small satellites, dubbed Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b, lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force base in California Thursday morning. The blandly named satellites could serve as proof of concept for an ambitious global broadband service envisioned by CEO Elon Musk.
The recycled rocket's main mission was to launch the larger Spanish Earth-imaging satellite Paz. It's a fairly routine delivery for SpaceX these days.
But once again Musk sparked the public's imagination with plans to build something unprecedented. In this case it's two constellations of satellites, totaling over 11,000 orbiting craft in all, that will be able to deliver terrestrial quality broadband to anywhere on the globe, be it an Arctic research station or an African village.
The Federal Communications Commission granted permission for the operation of the MicroSats last year, but Musk only publicly acknowledged the existence of the prototype satellites this week, saying on Twitter that Starlink "will serve (the) least served."
The pair of small satellites and Paz were successfully deployed about 11 minutes after launch.
The launch had been delayed three times from its initially scheduled date of Saturday, first to provide extra time to check out launch systems and an upgraded fairing, then due to high-altitude winds on Wednesday.
The Falcon 9 booster used to deliver the three satellites to orbit was not recovered. It was previously flown on a mission in August and recovered to be reused for this launch. SpaceX did attempt to use the new giant-net-on-a-boat setup that Musk announced after the launch of the Falcon Heavy earlier this month. It was attempting to catch the fairing, which is the nose cone that protects the payload during ascent. There was no video feed from the ship, so we won't know how that went until later.
t's not clear when we'll hear if the Starlink MicroSats are operational and how they're working as a proof of concept. The small satellites are designed to communicate with each other through optical laser links and with ground stations on Earth. If all goes well and SpaceX receives approval from the FCC to begin launching its first full satellite constellation, we could see hundreds and then thousands of other small satellites being launched to a low-earth orbit to begin spinning up the broadband service.
Most satellite internet customers are currently served by a handful of satellites in high geostationary orbit, but Starlink's lower altitude constellations would instead use a swarm of satellites to provide low-latency connectivity that feels more like a cable or fiber-optic connection.
All of this is likely several years and many more rocket launches down the road. Musk has said he hopes to see Starlink operational in the mid-2020s.
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