All Image Source: SpaceX Starlink.com [Revealed in advance by Henry Lim @henrylim96 via Twitter]
SpaceX aims to deploy about 12,000 internet-beaming Starlink satellites to offer service globally. The company will focus on providing internet connection to rural areas where internet is nonexistent, unreliable, and too expensive. SpaceX has already deployed 540 internet-beaming Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Starlink service will soon be offered in the Northern United States and Canada before this year ends. Those who live in Northern parts of the hemisphere will have the opportunity to become the first Beta testers of the service. "Starlink private beta begins this summer with public beta to follow. If you are signed up for updates, we will notify you if beta opportunities become available in your area," the company wrote in an e-mail to potential customers last week. Something unique about Starlink as an internet service provider is that SpaceX plans to fund missions to the moon and Mars with the revenue. "We think this is a key steppingstone towards establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the moon. We believe we can use the revenue from Starlink to fund Starship," the founder of SpaceX Elon Musk stated.
Source: SpaceX FCC filing
Customers will receive Starlink’s signal via ‘UFO on a stick’ user terminals and a triangular-shape router, that will act as a link between the outdoor terminal and the customer’s devices. The network will be easy to set-up at home – “Starlink terminal has motors to self-orient for optimal view angle. No expert installer required. Just plug in & give it a clear view of the sky,” Musk said, “Can be in garden, on roof, table, pretty much anywhere, so long as it has a wide view of the sky.” The Starlink network is designed to run real-time, competitive video games – “We're targeting latency below 20 milliseconds (ms), so somebody could play a fast-response video game at a competitive level, like that's the threshold for the latency,” Musk said. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) already approved the operation of 1 million ‘Ufo on a stick’ Terminals. The FCC approved the operation of “Starlink Routers” this month. The document revealed a photograph (shown above) of how the bottom of the device looks.
🛰 @SpaceX Starlink Order Payment Page pic.twitter.com/1cCDcZk3n9
— Henry Lim (@henrylim96) July 15, 2020
This week, a Twitter user @henrylim96 reached out to me to share he was able to view Starlink’s website portal for Beta Testers through the HTML source code, which means SpaceX is working on its website and he was able to catch a glimpse before its published. The collection of photos shown below are about the company’s Starlink Beta Test program. It is what Beta Testers will see when they sign up for the program. *Note: SpaceX’s Starlink website is under development, some information shown below may change.
About the Author
Evelyn Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
