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A Gulfstream G650 in flight
Gulfstream
SpaceX wants to further expand its Starlink satellite Internet testing by connecting the network to planes, the company revealed in a recent request to the Federal Communications Commission.
Elon Musk’s space company asked the FCC on November 6 if SpaceX could add Starlink user terminals “to a Gulfstream jet for a period of up to two years.”
“SpaceX is seeking experimental clearance to operate a user terminal onboard each of up to five private jets while they are (1) on the ground at an airport and (2) in flight over United States (including their territories and territorial waters), ”the company wrote in the FCC filing.
User terminals are the small devices on the ground that connect to the company’s satellite Internet network. SpaceX has started shipping user terminals to the service’s first beta testers. While the FCC’s application describes the terminals mounted on the plane as “electrically identical,” the Starlink user terminal for the jets is said to have a different physical design than the consumer terminals used on the ground – which Musk described as built. like a “UFO on a stick.”
A Starlink user terminal, which would connect consumers to the company’s satellite Internet service.
SpaceX
The Falcon 9 rocket booster, unloaded from SpaceX’s Demo-2 crewed mission, returns to Port Canaveral, Florida.
SpaceX
Starlink is SpaceX’s plan to build an interconnected Internet network with thousands of satellites, designed to provide high-speed Internet access anywhere on the planet. In October, the company began a public beta test of Starlink, with service priced at $ 99 per month.
To date, SpaceX has launched nearly 900 Starlink satellites – a fraction of the total needed for global coverage but enough to start providing service in some areas, including the northwestern United States. The company has started working with a handful of organizations in rural areas that orbiting Starlink satellites currently cover, such as Washington state.
The network is an ambitious endeavor that SpaceX estimates will cost around $ 10 billion or more to build. But company management estimates that Starlink could bring in up to $ 30 billion a year, more than 10 times the annual revenue of its rocket business.
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