SpaceX is reportedly seeking around $315 million (€278m) of new funding despite reportedly anticipating making around $3 billion this year from launching rockets.

CNBC said it has seen a document specifying the latest funding round for SpaceX. The Elon Musk-backed rockets-to-satellites business has already raised just over $1 billion this year.

The latest batch of money is likely to come – at least in part – says CNBC from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) which has some $191 billion of assets under management.

CNBC quoted the OTPP’s Senior MD Olivia Steedman, saying: “SpaceX is the world’s leading private space launch provider, and we are excited to work with the company in the next phase of its growth as it rolls out its Starlink satellite network.”

This latest funding round is to help SpaceX and in particular its Starlink satellite project which plans on placing a total of 11,943 satellites into Earth orbit and deliver broadband to the planet.

Separately, SpaceX said on June 28th that all but 3 of the batch of 60 test satellites launched in May are working correctly. Only 3 have failed to communicate with the ground-based relay stations.  Two additional satellites from the batch will be deliberately de-orbited to simulate “end of life” disposal, says SpaceX.

Forty-five satellites are in their final target positions of 342 miles high. This means that Musk’s technical team at Starlink can start testing the system.  “Now that the majority of the satellites have reached their operational altitude, SpaceX will begin using the constellation to start transmitting broadband signals, testing the latency and capacity by streaming videos and playing some high-bandwidth video games using gateways throughout North America,” SpaceX said in a statement.

Categories: Articles, Business, Funding