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SpaceX is preparing to broadcast a live video of a scene in the space so strange that Elon Musk has struggled to describe it.
The rocket company plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida between 10:30 am and midnight Thursday, and broadcast the event live.
Sixty new generation satellites will be grouped together at the top of the rocket – the first of a global Internet network called Starlink, which in its final form could count 12,000 such satellites. This is nearly seven times the number of operational satellites orbiting the Earth today.
Each Starlink satellite is about the size of a desk and weighs about 500 pounds. Altogether, the satellites and the key elements of the rocket on the upper stage on which they will be placed in orbit weigh more than 18 tons.
"This is the heaviest payload ever launched by Falcon 9," Musk said during a phone conversation with reporters Wednesday night.
In fact, it's the heaviest payload ever launched by SpaceX, including its massive Falcon Heavy rocket.
The simultaneous deployment of five dozen spacecraft is not an easy task, and SpaceX plans to show this process during a live webcast on YouTube, integrated below.
& # 39; It will look weird & # 39;
SpaceX has a lot of experience in launching several satellites at once. In December, for example, he sent 64 satellites in space.
But this mission used heavy spring mechanisms to extract each satellite, and most spacecraft were much smaller and lighter than Starlink satellites. (SpaceX also used a subcontractor to build the satellite deployment stack for the mission.)
To minimize the weight and complexity of Thursday's internal mission, SpaceX engineers are trying something unusual, Musk said.
"This is going to be a very slow deployment, where we turn the [upper] step, "said Musk.
The precise layout of the Starlink satellites will give everyone a unique inertia as the rocket rotates, said Musk, causing the space shuttle to float out of their stack locations at different times and speeds.
"It will look like spreading a deck of cards on a table," said Musk. "It will look weird compared to normal satellite deployments."
He added that the satellites can touch or collide with each other during deployment, "but it will be very, very slow, and the satellites are designed to handle it."
Musk said that each Starlink would then start and start pulling its Hall Booster, or Ion Engine. The engines will project krypton gas ions to fly slowly but very efficiently from 440 kilometers to 550 kilometers above the Earth.
From there, SpaceX plans to test its Starlink Internet concept by interacting with the Starlink spacecraft from ground stations and routing data from one satellite to another.
What does Starlink reserve?
In the future, each Starlink satellite would be connected to four others by laser beam, which would allow the Starlink network to move Internet traffic at a speed close to that of light, in a vacuum. This is nearly 50% faster than fiber optic cables can transmit data to the ground, which means that Starlink could have a considerable advantage in terms of speed.
Musk said SpaceX had "enough capital" to make Starlink operational and suggested that SpaceX could start earning money from Starlink before it finished launching the planned 12,000 satellites. 2027 is the time required by the licenses of the Federal Communications Commission.
"For the system to be economically viable, there are actually 1,000 satellites," said Musk, "which is obviously a lot of satellites, but it is well below 10,000 or 12,000."
The omnipresence of aerial satellites also means that Starlink could provide broadband Internet access almost without delay in most parts of the Earth, as well as in airplanes, ships and even cars (perhaps the Tesla electric vehicles could start). Musk has repeatedly stated that he wants to make this Internet access affordable, especially in areas where the web service is weak or non-existent.
Mark Handley, a computer network researcher at University College London who studied Starlink, had previously told Business Insider that the project could affect the lives of "potentially everyone" by offering a broadband to broadband and widespread in most parts of the world.
"This is the most exciting new network we've seen in a long time," Handley said.
Watch the first live Starlink mission
Musk said that SpaceX would begin deploying 60 Starlink satellites about an hour after launch.
You can tune in to the SpaceX live broadcast below from approximately 15 minutes before takeoff, which must take place between 10:30 am and midnight ET.
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