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Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has given emergency responders in Washington access to its Starlink satellites to help fight fires.

Through the satellite-based internet constellation Starlink, SpaceX plans to provide broadband internet across the globe and enable connectivity to billions of people who may not have reliable internet access.

SpaceX has already launched hundreds of satellites into orbit, though the firefighters’ use of the network is the first early application of the internet service to be disclosed.

The private space firm hopes to eventually launch tens of thousands of Starlink satellites to create a constellation capable of beaming high-speed broadband down to 99 per cent of the inhabited world.

“Once these satellites reach their target position, we will be able to roll out a fairly wide public beta in northern US and hopefully southern Canada,” Musk tweeted following the launch.

“Other countries to follow as soon as we receive regulatory approval.”

What is 6G? Why do we need it? And why should we consider it before we even have 5G? We will answer these questions in this article with the insights from leading companies such as Samsung and Ericsson.

‘It seemed like out of nowhere SpaceX just came up and catapulted us into the 21st century,’ says a leader of the Hoh tribe, which is based in a remote area of Washington state.

SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 6, 2020. The private spaceflight company has now launched well over 700 of these internet-providing satellites into orbit. [SpaceX launches 60 Starlink satellites and lands rocket at sea](https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-12-internet-satellites-launch)

Credit: SpaceX

#SpaceX just partnered with the U.S. military’s #Space Development Agency (SDA) to manufacture four new satellites that the Pentagon will use to detect and track missiles from space.

The $149 million contract is for four satellites, according to Reuters, which are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2022. The actual #missile-tracking sensors will be developed by a separate subcontractor and attached to the #satellites later, but the military is hoping to piggyback on SpaceX’s recent success in ramping up satellite production for its #Starlink network.

It’s the first time SpaceX is building satellites for the military.

Continue reading “The Pentagon Commissioned SpaceX to Build Missile-Tracking Satellites” »

Today we catch up on all the latest Starship and Super Heavy updates. Go over recent Dragon news. Talk Starlink and other upcoming missions, and finish with today’s Honorable Mention.

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Continue reading “SpaceX in the News Episode 115” »

SpaceX is developing a new satellite bus for the Space Development Agency based on the Starlink design.

WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency awarded SpaceX a $149 million contract and L3Harris a $193.5 million contract to each build four satellites to detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

The contracts announced Oct. 5 are for the first eight satellites of a potentially much larger Space Development Agency constellation of sensor satellites known as Tracking Layer Tranche 0. This is SpaceX’s first military contract to produce satellites.

Continue reading “SpaceX, L3Harris win Space Development Agency contracts to build missile-warning satellites” »

China is pushing ahead with developing a giant Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation competing with SpaceX, Amazon and OneWeb, according to the Washington DC-based analyst Bhavya Lal and California State University’s Professor Larry Press.

Press, professor of information systems at the California State University, mentioned a recent Chinese spectrum filing in a blog of the CircleID website. China “has filed a spectrum application with the International Telecommunication Union for two constellations with the cryptic names GW-A59 and GW-2″ for a total of 12,992 satellites, Press said.

“We heard about an announcement of a constellation with nearly 13,000 satellites,” Bhavya Lal said in SpaceWatchGlobal’s Space Café webtalk last week. Lal is a senior space policy analyst at the IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute in Washington DC and was in the lead for IDA’s recently published report “Evaluation of China’s Commercial Space Sector”.

Continue reading “China pushes ahead with giant 13,000 satellite LEO constellation” »