SpaceX has received good news from India’s government with reports that its Starlink broadband service is to receive an “expedited” fast-track approval to operate in India ahead of Elon Musk’s visit to the country. Starlink was also authorised for use in Albania last week. However, there are doubts in some quarters over Starlink’s profitability. Bloomberg, […]

In the week that SpaceX has been given a market valuation of some $180 billion (€165.7bn) it is no great surprise that the overall space economy is forecast to triple in value to around $1.8 trillion and growing at twice the rate of global GDP, according to an Insight Report from the World Economic Forum, […]

SpaceX says it now has 2.7 million “customers – a rise of 100,000 in just three weeks. This is a growth rate of some 4,700 new users per day. If this rate is maintained, then another 1 million users by year-end is possible if not probable. A report from analysts at investment bank Morgan Stanley […]

During March the FCC approved some SpaceX applications and firmly denied others. But on March 28th it approved a request from SpaceX that was filed a few days earlier on March 25th. The application is for “experimental” (“Special Temporary Authority”) test transmissions direct-to-cellular devices from Starlink satellites. The approval kicks in on April 15th and […]

SpaceX engineers had a busy March 30th. They successfully launched Eutelsat’s latest satellite (36D) from Cape Kennedy and managed another launch a couple of hours later which carried their own first batch of Starlink broadband satellites for the weekend. But a planned third launch (from California) was scrubbed because of bad weather. The third launch […]

SpaceX has been asking the FCC for permission to share spectrum already allocated to Globalstar and Dish Network AWS-4 spectrum. The FCC has dismissed SpaceX’s application. The SpaceX application had included deployment of 7,500 Starlink ‘second-generation’ satellites with equipment operating in the 1610-1617.775 MHz (Earth to space), 2483.5-1500 MHz (space to Earth, and in the […]

SpaceX is asking the FCC for permission to operate some of its mega-constellation of satellites at much lower orbits of 340-360 kms altitude in order to better serve its ‘direct-to-phone’ service. SpaceX, in its FCC application, sayid: “Operating at lower altitudes will also shorten the physical link between the ground and the satellite, enabling lower-latency […]

Some SpaceX satellites are already fitted with laser-based devices (officially called Optical Inter-Satellite Links, OISLs). At the Satellite 2024 event in Washington SpaceX’s president and COO Gwynne Shotwell explained that SpaceX was happy to start selling its lasers to other companies. Shotwell said that SpaceX has around 5000 lasers in use of its satellites, and […]

SpaceX‘s president and COO Gwynne Shotwell was the star speaker at the Washington Satellite 2024 event. She touched on many key elements. She told delegates to the Satellite 2024 event in Washington that Starship Flight #3 was “incredibly successful” and that #4 would take place in “about 6 weeks”. But the flight would not carry […]

Data from astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell shows that 6,011 SpaceX ‘Starlink’ broadband satellites have been launched as at March 16th. He adds that 5,614 are still in orbit, of which 64 appear failed and 122 appear to be in the process of deliberate retirement. SpaceX launched this latest batch of 23 satellites into orbit on March […]