Spaceon, of Elon Musk, already has its first satellites in orbit to provide Internet from the space

One of the company's Falcon 9 rockets took off without incident from Cape Canaveral Florida. In the second phase of the procedure, the rocket began to release the satellites an hour after launch, at an altitude of 440 kilometers. "The successful deployment of 60 Starlink satellites confirmed!" Writes the company on Twitter.

Satellites use their turbines to reach their positions in a relatively low orbit of 550 kilometers. The location is slightly higher than the International Space Station, but well below most terrestrial satellites. The highest of them is in a geostationary orbit of 36,000 kilometers. The advantage of being so low is the reduction of delay times, the key to broadband connectivity.

The launch was originally scheduled for last week, but was postponed, first by strong wind, then by the need to update the software.

The billionaire company Elon Musk, which is leading the private space rocket launch race, is now trying to take control of the future Internet space market.

This launch makes it one of the pioneers, with the start-up OneWeb and well before the Amazon project, Kuiper, the creation of the main rival of Musk in space, Jeff Bezos.

Musk hopes to earn between 3% and 5% of the global internet market, valued at $ 30,000 million last week, ten times more than what he earns with his pitchers.

The goal is to fund the development of its rockets and spacecraft in pursuit of the ultimate goal of the SpaceX boss: colonize Mars.

Each satellite weighs only 227 kg and was built in Redmond, near Seattle.

SpaceX obtained permission from the US authorities to launch 12,000 satellites in various orbits, but Musk said 1,000 would be enough to make the system "economically viable."

"Starlink" will start operating once 800 satellites have been activated, which will require a dozen additional launches.

Currently, there are approximately 2 100 active satellites in Earth orbit (thousands more remain in orbit but are no longer operational).

To receive the SpaceX Internet, you'll need a flat dish the size of a "medium pizza box," Musk said. Although it has not yet started looking for customers, the company will probably partner with telecom operators.