SpaceX now has 1200 Starlinks in orbit
March 12, 2021
By Chris Forrester
SpaceX successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit on March 11th, and brought back the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage to a landing on the ‘Just Read the Instructions’ floating barge.
Astronomer and close observer of Starlink activity Jonathan McDowell says 1265 of the broadband satellites have been launched in total and 1200 are working and remain in orbit.
SpaceX has extended an invitation to potential subscribers in the UK. The company says: “During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all. As we launch more satellites, install more ground stations and improve our networking software, data speed, latency and uptime will improve dramatically.”
Having 1200 working satellites in orbit is an excellent start to Elon Musk’s global coverage, and the next few months should see his initial plan for 1440 working satellites (or just 4 more flights each carrying 60 satellites) achieved.