The success of SpaceX Starlink is giving a boost to Elon Musk's satellite Internet aspirations.

SpaceX officially entered the high-speed satellite race, delivering 60 Starlink satellites in orbit via a Falcon 9 rocket. The working rocket reached take-off at 19:30. Thursday PT of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Originally planned for last week, the first delivery of Starlink satellites has been cleaned twice, one because of bad weather and a second time to "maximize the success of the mission". Once these obstacles were overcome, Falcon 9 swept the dark coast of Florida and headed for space with a dazzling race.

The Falcon 9 booster successfully landed on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You parked in the Atlantic Ocean after being used in two previous SpaceX launches.

A feat, of course, but for the future aspirations of society in the global Internet, the successful deployment of 60 Starlink satellites in orbit is much more important.

Starlink aims to provide satellite broadband to customers around the world. Eventually, the service will form a network of satellites around the Earth, featuring some 12,000 space robots in a constellation that leaves no corner of the planet without the Internet. At approximately 20:32 PT, the first 60 of these satellites were released from the Falcon 9 payload bay, 273 miles (440 kilometers) above the Earth. Small boosters will see the satellites propel themselves into an orbit of 550 km.

The satellites, which look like flat-screen TVs, immediately left the payload bay. There is no onboard deployment mechanism and the package of 60 slowly float on top of each other, like a deck of cards that runs out with one hand. Each satellite weighs 500 pounds each and contains a single solar panel, tiny propulsors, a navigation system that allows SpaceX to find them in orbit and a handful of high-speed antennas, so they can send signals. The single-panel solar design is to minimize potential points of failure, and in orbit, the painting unfolds like an accordion.

Elon Musk tweeted Thursday night that the 60 satellites are online and that the ionic thrusters would be activated in the early hours of Friday.

Ionic krypton thrusters activate in about 3 hours to go into orbit

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2019

Six more launches are needed before Starlink is fully operational, but this first launch gives SpaceX a chance to test the performance of its constellation. At a press conference held May 15, Musk said: "There are a lot of new technologies, so it's possible that some of these satellites do not work" and suggested that there be "a small possibility that all of these satellites will not work. "

Cross fingers, then.

Musk's SpaceX is not the only company trying to launch a megaconstellation of satellites providing Internet services. OneWeb, backed by Virgin from Richard Branson and Qualcomm, launched its first six satellites on Feb. 27, behind Russian Soyuz-2 pilot Arianespace. OneWeb has not yet launched a second batch of satellites but will eventually launch elements of its constellation into orbit every 21 days. It will be a partnership between Virgin Orbit and Blue Origin to send their satellites in space.

Similarly, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, announced that his company also plans to enter the broadband satellite game. On April 4, he announced his satellite constellation, the Kuiper Project, although details and planned launch dates are currently unknown.

Updated at 21:40 PT