- Starlink , as the project is called, could move internet data about 50% faster than is physically possible with current fiber-optic cables.
- Financial institutions have a lot to gain: Starlink could relay information about far-away markets significantly faster than modern technologies permit.
- Starlink should also bring cheap, blazing-fast internet to remote areas, airplanes, ships, and cars, plus make international teleconferencing and online gaming nearly lag-free.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .
Elon Musk's SpaceX is launching the first of 12,000 Starlink satellites to cover Earth in high-speed internet. Here's how the ambitious project might work.
Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to launch its first 60 of nearly 12,000 internet-providing satellites on Wednesday evening.
SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, is starting to launch an internet revolution.
On Wednesday between 10:30 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. EDT, weather permitting, SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Crammed inside the rocket's nosecone will be 60 tabletop-size satellites designed to test a floating internet backbone called Starlink .
If completed in 2027, Starlink will consist of nearly 12,000 satellites six times the number of all operational spacecraft now in orbit . The goal is to blanket the Earth with high-speed, low-latency, and affordable internet access.
Even partial deployment of Starlink would benefit the financial sector and bring pervasive broadband internet to rural and remote areas. Though completing the project may cost $10 billion or more, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX, leaked company documents suggest Starlink's revenue could peak at more than $30 billion a year.
It's not going to be easy to pull off, though, as Musk indicated leading up to Wednesday's launch.
"Much will likely go wrong on 1st mission," Musk tweeted on Saturday.
Despite the Starlink's scale and importance to SpaceX, Musk and Shotwell have provided precious few details about it. But Federal Communications Commission (FCC) documents contain enough information for experts to make very educated guesses.
"This is the most exciting new network we've seen in a long time," Mark Handley , a computer networking researcher at University College London who's studied and modeled Starlink, told Business Insider. He added the project could impact the lives of "potentially everybody."
Here's how Starlink might work and how it might change the internet as we know it.
Starlink aims to solve two big problems with the modern internet, and make billions of dollars doing it: Lack of pervasive and affordable connections, and significant lag between distant locations.
Dave Mosher/Insider
The internet is, in its simplest form, a series of connected computers. We pay service providers for routing our data to and from a web of devices.
Associated Press
A lot of our data is sent in pulses of light through fiber-optic cables. More packets of information can go farther and with a stronger signal than via electrical signals through metal wires.
Shutterstock
But fiber is fairly expensive and tedious to lay, especially between locations on opposite sides of Earth.
Reuters
Even in one country, achieving a direct wired path from one location to another is rare. There are also far more poorly connected regions than well-connected ones.
Business Insider
The cables have a speed limit, too: Light moves through the vacuum of space about 47% faster than it can through solid fiber-optic glass.
Shutterstock
This isnt an issue for normal browsing or watching TV. But over international distances, it leads to high latency, or lag. The time delay is especially pronounced in long-distance videoconferencing and calls.
Carolyn Kaster/AP
Data beamed over current satellites is one of the most laggy. Thats because nearly all of those spacecraft orbit Earth from about 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) high, where they can "float" above one location on Earth. But thats far enough to cause a more than half-second of lag.
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio; Business Insider
Latency matter most to financial institutions. With markets that move billions of dollars in fractions of a second, any delay can lead to big losses over a competitor with a less laggy (and thus more up-to-date) connection to the web.
Reuters/Philippe Wojazer
SpaceX wants to cut that long-distance lag while also providing internet access almost anywhere in the world. The company plans to do thisthrough a dense and unprecedented network of satellites that hug close the Earth.
NASA
In February, SpaceX launched its first two Starlink prototypes, called Tintin-A and Tintin-B. The test helped demonstrate the basic concept and refine the satellite design.
SpaceX/YouTube
On Wednesday, SpaceX plans to launch 60 close-to-production Starlink satellites at once. The launch will deploy them in a string in orbit at about 217 miles (350 kilometers) above Earth.
Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter
From there, they will use Hall thrusters (or ion engines) to rise up to an altitude of about 342 miles (550 kilometers). This will be about 65 times closer to Earth than geostationary satellites and that much less laggy.
NASA
Each final Starlink spacecraft will link to four others using lasers. No other internet-providing satellites do this, says Handley, and its really what makes them special: They can beam data over Earths surface at nearly the speed of light, bypassing the limitations of fiber-optics.
Mark Handley/University College London
SpaceXs first batch of 60 satellites wont use interconnecting lasers. Instead, Handley thinks the company will use them to test ground-to-space connections. A handful of steerable parabolic antennas that can track satellites will likely be used for this task.
Dave Mosher/Business Insider
In the future, though, Musk has said user terminals that can relay data to and from Starlink will have no moving parts and be the size of a pizza box. Theyll also cost about $200, he added.
Shutterstock
Thats plenty small to add to a home. "Theres also no reason one of these couldnt be flat and thin enough to put on the roof of a car," Handley said.
Tesla
Musk said it takes about six launches (or 360 satellites) to establish "minor" internet coverage, and 12 launches (or 720 satellites) for "moderate" coverage. But the immediate and major goal is to deploy nearly 1,600 satellites about 217 miles (350 kilometers) high.
Mark Handley/University College London
Once Starlink has hundreds of laser-linked satellites in its network, their connections can move data at close to light-speed along fairly direct paths. Handley thinks Starlinks initial layout is designed to prioritize East-West connections.
Mark Handley/University College London
Starlinks best paths will always change, since the satellites will always be moving. Yet the typical roundtrip data speed from New York to London, for example, may be 15% less laggy than ideal fiber-optic connections and 40% less laggy than the internet generally.
Mark Handley/University College London
The advantages of Starlink improve dramatically over very long distances. (Over short distances, Handley said, fiber-optic will always win.)
Mark Handley/University College London
Handley says North-South connections wont be as good at first: Data will zigzag far out of the way to make its shortest roundtrip. So initially, Starlink may not be as fast as fiber (if it exists at all) between North-South connections.
Mark Handley/University College London
On top of about 1,600 satellites orbiting in a shell at 342 miles (550 kilometers) high, SpaceX hopes to launch another 2,800 satellites at altitudes between 684-823 miles (1,100-1,325 kilometers). Some would orbit over Earths poles to solve tricky North-South connections and help bring access to Alaska.
Mark Handley/University College London
Half of these 4,400 low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are supposed to be deployed by 2024, and the full constellation deployed by 2027. If SpaceX fails, the FCC may pull the companys license (though the company could ask for an extension).
FCC
But SpaceX is not stopping with 4,400 satellites in LEO. It also plans to roll out 7,500 satellites in very low-Earth orbits (VLEO), or about 210 miles (338 kilometers) in altitude.
Dave Mosher/Insider
In rural and remote areas, even a partially complete Starlink network could bring broadband internet speeds rivaling those found in well-networked cities.
sqft.com
While financial companies and teleconference businesses in urban areas should benefit from Starlink, Handley thinks consumer-level internet users probably wont see much benefit due to limited capacity.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
"If millions of people want to hop onto Starlink all at one time, that is just not going to work," he said. The problem is akin to a cell tower being overloaded with too many users, which can slow down or disrupt connectivity.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Remote locations are a big opportunity, though, since there will be many satellites overhead with a lot of capacity and very few users. Cruise ships and airplanes could see much faster and lower-latency internet.
NAN728/Shutterstock
With so many new satellites in orbit, however, spaceflight experts are concerned about the potential for creating space junk that can damage or maim other spacecraft.
Shutterstock
Pieces of space debris can travel dozen of times faster than a bullet shot from a gun. At such speeds, even a small piece of metal can blow apart a satellite, leading to the creation of more high-speed debris.
Analytical Graphics Inc.
Handley says SpaceXs plan seems sensible, though. Each satellite can use its thruster to fall out of orbit and destroy itself. Also, in low-Earth orbit, fleeting gases will naturally slow down satellites over time, causing them to fall out of orbit within five years.
ESA/D. Ducros
"Theyll be going through a very rapid learning phase, and theres a fair chance theyll get some of it wrong," Handley said.
Jesse Carpenter / Greg Merkes / NASA Ames file
SpaceX plans to launch 60 Starlink satellites with its go-to Falcon 9 rockets, which are partly reusable and have successfully launched nearly five dozen space missions.
SpaceX/Flickr (public domain)
If SpaceX is to send up all 12,000 satellites that it needs to, and by the end of 2027 the FCCs full-deployment deadline it will have to launch, on average, about 120 Starlink spacecraft per month.
SpaceX/Flickr (public domain)
That translates to about two Falcon 9 launches per month, on SpaceXs own dime, and on top of a manifest of commercial and government satellite launches.
SpaceX/Twitter
This also does not account for the replacement of satellites, which are designed to last about five years. "Its not just doing it once. Its completely ongoing," Handley said. "So youre committed to launching 12,000 every five years"
Patrick Fallon/Reuters
Handley does not think SpaceXs existing rockets are sufficient. "I think this requires Starship," he said. Starship, which is in development, may be a 400-foot-tall, fully reusable system that could launch hundreds of Starlink satellites at once, and perhaps at 10% of the cost of a Falcon 9 launch.
Kimi Talvitie
So while Musk often speaks about Starship in terms of settling Mars, Handley thinks Starlink is dependent on its existence. "You will have these very, very capable, fully reusable launchers sitting around waiting to go to Mars every two years," he said. "And what are you going to do with them in between?"
Kimi Talvitie; NASA; Mark Brake/Getty Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider
SpaceX is developing Starship concurrently in South Texas and Florida. Musk said in May that he expects to present new details about the system, which is expected to debut in the early 2020s, around June 20.
Copyright Jaime Almaguer
See Also:
- Elon Musk just showed off 60 of the first SpaceX satellites that could change the internet as we know it
- Elon Musk made another 420 joke while unveiling 60 high-tech satellites that could transform the internet
- 'It failed': NASA says SpaceX and Boeing's recent spaceship-parachute tests did not go well
SEE ALSO: SpaceX confirmed that its Crew Dragon spaceship for NASA was 'destroyed' by a recent test. Here's what we learned about the explosive failure.
DON'T MISS: Watch Jeff Bezos describe his dream to colonize space, unveil the 'Blue Moon' lunar lander, and rib Elon Musk