SpaceX has shipped 100,000 Starlink devices

Elon Musk said in a series of tweets on Monday that his aerospace company, SpaceX, has shipped 100,000 Starlink devices so far and now serves 14 countries with pending license applications in others.

The tweets imply that Starlink added 10,000 subscribers in about 3 weeks. In late July, the company said it had around 90,000 users of its Internet service, CNBC reported.

Starlink is a SpaceX initiative to create a network of tens of thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as the constellation, to provide high-speed Internet access to customers anywhere on Earth.

SpaceX rolled out its Starlink beta internet service at the end of 2020 with a program that allowed select customers to try it out for $ 99 per month, not including upfront charges for shipping, taxes, installation and equipment such as roof racks to keep terminals in place.

A Starlink kit includes a satellite dish, bracket, power supply, and WiFi router.

More recently, SpaceX has indicated that it plans to expand the service to work for the Internet in flight, or on moving ships and in trucks.

SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell announced in February 2020 that the company would likely separate from its Starlink satellite business and may have an IPO for the unit in the coming years.

The initiative has already been capital intensive for SpaceX. In 2018, Shotwell predicted it would cost SpaceX around $ 10 billion or more to build the Starlink network.

Last week, federal documents revealed that SpaceX intended to use its Starship rocket as the primary vehicle to orbit its Starlink Gen2 satellites. SpaceX has already launched 1,740 satellites as part of Starlink and is aiming for its Gen2 Starlink system to add around 30,000 Internet satellites.