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SpaceX revolutionized the last race in space by building reusable rockets. And the ambitions of the company owned by Elon Musk do not stop there. As part of its low-cost broadband Internet projects worldwide, SpaceX is expected to launch a constellation of satellites in orbit.
It is expected that SpaceX is preparing this week for the first crucial step in making this plan a reality.
Elon Musk's state-of-the-art rocket company will again attempt to launch 60 mini-satellites in low Earth orbit.
And this is only the first of a mega-constellation of satellites called Starlink by SpaceX.
Starlink was due to take off last week, but strong winds in the upper atmosphere caused a delay of one day.
And SpaceX announced in a tweet Thursday that it would wait another week for the company to "update the satellite software and check it all again."
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The tweet said, "I always want to do everything we can on the ground to maximize the success of the mission, the next launch opportunity in about a week."
SpaceX's Starlink mission is only a small part of what SpaceX wants to eventually become a much more ambitious project: a group of potentially several thousand satellites swirling on Earth that, according to the company, could eventually make available a low-cost Internet access for a significant part of the planet. population that is not yet online.
If SpaceX succeeds, the launch would be the most important test ever performed by a company attempting such a project.
This could even allow SpaceX to beat competitors like Amazon and OneWeb, supported by SoftBank, who each want to create their own Internet constellations.
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The project is still in its infancy. Elon Musk revealed last week that the satellites in the first group would be virtually identical to mass production iterations.
The only feature they lack is the ability to communicate with each other in orbit.
Elon Musk said: "There are a lot of new technologies here, so it's possible that some of these satellites do not work," before admitting that there was a "small possibility" that none will work.
SpaceX will need six more missions, he said, before Starlink can provide consistent Internet coverage for small parts of the world.
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According to Musk, it will take 12 launches for the company to cover a significant portion of the world's population.
Getting the entire constellation will probably cost billions of dollars, and Musk acknowledged that such efforts had ruined others.
But when asked about SpaceX funding, he said the company had "sufficient capital" to carry out its projects.
He added that SpaceX's latest round of funding had generated "more interest than we were looking for.
In April, the company sought to raise about $ 400 million.
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