SpaceX Starlink: Elon Musk will launch the first 60 satellites in TONIGHT orbit

SpaceX will launch 60 satellites in orbit around the Earth tonight, as billionaire Elon Musk's aerospace company starts setting up its Starlink Internet service.

Starlink aims to provide reliable and inexpensive Internet access anywhere in the world, including in troubled locations with current infrastructure.

The Starlink network will eventually be a "super-constellation" of nearly 12,000 satellites, providing Internet coverage worldwide, according to Musk.

SpaceX received the go-ahead from the US Federal Communications Commission to start launching satellites last month and was expected to send the first 60 to orbit on Wednesday.

However, strong winds at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida prevented the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the satellites from taking off.

The launch was postponed to 22:30 EST Thursday (2:30 GMT).

Each satellite weighs 227 kg, making it the heavier SpaceX payload to date.

Once in orbit, each group of 60 satellites will generate more power than the International Space Station and provide 1 terabit of bandwidth to the Earth.

It will take 6 additional launches of 60 satellites to achieve "initial activation" and at least 12 additional launches to achieve "significant coverage", Musk says.

The company is scheduled to bring into service half of the satellites in its constellation by 2024.

Internet access for all

The use of satellites for Internet access is nothing new, but the traditional problem is that these services do not allow to quickly download data.

Their distance from the Earth also means that the time it takes for the signal to pass from you to the satellite to its destination is longer than the normal communications connected to the Earth.

For normal broadband networks, delays of 20 milliseconds (ms) are possible, while geostationary satellites have a delay of 550 ms. As a result, satellite broadband is generally only used if there is no other option.

However, SpaceX's Starlink satellites will be placed in a much lower orbit – some of them only 340 miles above the surface of the Earth.

This will dramatically reduce latency, with SpaceX claiming that the delay will be only 15 ms.

The disadvantage is that the satellites will not be in a geosynchronous orbit, so it takes a lot more to provide global coverage. They will also last only a few years before burning.

Currently, Starlink is only authorized for US operations.

First step towards Mars?

If successful, Starlink could be a valuable investment for SpaceX because the demand for Internet access is enormous and there are many places on Earth where fixed broadband is not practical.

Musk said it expects revenue from rocket launch services provided by SpaceX to be about $ 3 billion a year.

This makes Starlink a key element in generating the funds SpaceX needs to fund Musk's larger dream of developing a new satellite capable of transporting paying customers to the moon and trying to colonize Mars.

"We believe that it is a decisive step on the path to establishing an autonomous city on Mars and a base on the moon" said Musk.

WARNING

Some space scientists report that Elon Musk's projects, as well as those of rival companies working on their own low-orbit constellations, increase the risk of creating dangerous debris.

"The worst case is: you launch all your satellites, you go bankrupt and they all stay there," Scientific American Dr. Stijn Lemmens, a scientist at the European Space Agency told Scientific American.

"So you have thousands of new satellites without a plan to get them out of there, and you would have a Kessler syndrome."

Kessler syndrome is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit is high enough that collisions between objects can cause a cascade, each collision generating space debris increasing the risk of subsequent collision.

One implication is that the distribution of debris into orbit could make space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital areas impractical for many generations.

SpaceX says that since all satellites have their own propulsion systems, they can be manipulated to avoid collisions.

Glenn Peterson, Senior Engineering Specialist at Aerospace Corporation, says that if all planned mega-constellations were launched, current tracking technologies would generate more than 67,000 "collision alerts" per year.

Operators would then be forced to choose between hundreds of precautionary satellite maneuvers per day or a low risk of collision.