Starlink is a system of satellites made by a company called SpaceX. It’s like a big network in space that provides internet to people in more than 71 countries. They also want to offer mobile phone service worldwide after 2023.
SpaceX began sending Starlink satellites into space in 2019. By early January 2024, there were over 5,289 of these small satellites flying around the Earth in low orbit. They talk to special ground stations on the ground. They plan to send up to 12,000 satellites, maybe even 42,000 later on. In December 2022, SpaceX said they had over 1 million people using Starlink. By May 2023, it was 1.5 million, and by September 2023, it was 2 million. Starlink played an important role in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
The SpaceX’s main place for working on Starlink is in Redmond, Washington. There, they research, build, and control the satellites’ orbits. In May 2018, SpaceX said it would cost at least $10 billion to make and launch all the satellites. In January 2017, SpaceX thought Starlink would bring in $12 billion a year by 2022 and over $30 billion by 2025. In 2022, they made about $1.4 billion, but they didn’t make a profit until 2023.
Some scientists worry that Starlink might make it harder for them to study space from the ground. They’re also concerned about adding more things to an already busy space around Earth. SpaceX is trying to fix these issues by making the satellites less bright and adding special engines so they can move around safely in space. They can even avoid crashing into each other using special tracking data.
