After unforeseen delays, SpaceX officially deployed 60 of its Starlink satellites into space at the end of last month to kick off the company’s space-centric broadband internet array. With just 60 satellites orbiting the Earth at the time of this writing, Starlink is very much in its experimental stages; but SpaceX plans to have more than 12,000 satellites in space eventually.
Broadband internet is already available to much of the world today, but this doesn’t apply everywhere. Some regions of the world are severely limited by seclusion, and as you might come to expect, this impacts the number of internet options available in those areas. Starlink aims to resolve this problem by offering a broadband internet solution to the entire globe.
Even for regions that do already have access to broadband internet, SpaceX’s Starlink internet system promises incredibly low latency data transfers, as the information will be transmitted in the vacuum of space rather than through glass (fiber optics); this means that Starlink will be useful for low-latency communications, which many services depend on.
Not only will Starlink serve a great purpose in connecting many parts of the world with a high-speed internet solution, but it will help SpaceX develop funding for future space-centric projects, including but not limited to exploring other planets like Mars.
