SpaceX launches dozens of 'Starlink' internet satellites into space - its heaviest payload ever

[RandiFan1290]

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/spacex-launches-dozens-starlink-internet-satellites-space-its-heaviest-payload-ncna1009556

SpaceX sent a packed rocket of 60 satellites into space on Thursday morning, in a key first mission toward building the company’s own high-speed internet network.

The launch was "the heaviest payload a Falcon 9 [rocket] has ever launched, or Falcon Heavy, for that matter," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told reporters before the mission. All in all, the rocket lifted more than 37,000 pounds of mass, he said.

Called "Starlink," the satellites represent the company’s ambitious plan to build an interconnected satellite network to beam high-speed internet to anywhere on the planet. It’s how Musk believes SpaceX will be able to generate enough revenue to realize its even more ambitious goals of sending astronauts to Mars, and to establish the first human colony on the Red Planet.

The Falcon 9 rocket launched from the company's pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. About an hour after liftoff, SpaceX deployed the 60 Starlink satellites in a "very low Earth orbit" of 440 kilometers above the surface. The full Starlink network would consist of 11,943 satellites flying close to the planet, closer than the International Space Station.

[USALiberal]

1. This will change rural internet if workable and afordable! Nt

[mitch96]

2. I'm curious how many military/CIA satellites were in the bunch??

It's easy to knock out one or two communications satellites.. Harder to knock out a whole bunch..
m

[DetlefK]

3. With best regards by Tessier-Ashpool.

"Neuromancer" was the sci-fi novel that invented the internet. Tessier-Ashpool was an excentric family that got rich by having internet-servers in orbit.

[RandiFan1290]

4. SpaceX Starlink Satellites Spotted Over Netherlands

[Thyla]

5. Cool to see once I guess

I imagine with 12000 of them it will grow pretty old pretty quickly.

Not sure for how long they will be visible like that now that the orbits are being raised. As far as I can tell there is no reliable ground tracking yet. Wouldn't mind catching a glimpse.

[NickB79]

6. 11,000 satellites will create a hell of a debris problem later on

What's the plan once these have to be decommissioned when they're obsolete in a decade or two?

[RandiFan1290]

7. From NYT

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/23/science/spacex-launch.html

SpaceX said that 95 percent of a Starlink satellite would burn up on re-entry, but that would still mean that about 25 pounds of debris — in particular, an ion thruster that is part of the propulsion system and steel reaction wheels that keep the spacecraft pointed in the correct direction — would reach the surface. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission on March 13, the company said that it had changed the design so that future versions of the satellites would be entirely destroyed during re-entry.