Have you ever gazed into the night sky, looking for constellations and shooting stars? Perhaps you’ve noticed something small and bright streaking across the sky. If it has no tail, you are most likely seeing a satellite in low earth orbit (LEO). It was not until mid-2019 that seeing satellites with the naked eye started to become likely.
On May 23, 2019, Starlink, a division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, launched 60 internet satellites. This was just the first part of an ambitious plan to bring satellite internet with broadband speeds to people across the globe. By keeping the satellites in a low orbit, Starlink can offer a service that is comparable to a cable or fiber-optic network.
Satellite internet service isn’t a new development. Communications satellites have provided internet services to people in remote areas since the 1990s. Starlink isn’t even the first company to attempt to create a network of low-orbit satellites. Teledesic, which was funded by Microsoft, tried to do the same thing but went bankrupt in the early 2000s.
Starlink is well on its way to success, however. By mid-2021, there were well over a thousand operational Starlink satellites in the sky.
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