The ‘crazy ideas’ company SpaceX, headed by ‘Mr. Crazy ideas’ has now set their eyes on an ambitious goal of supplying the entire Planet Earth with internet connection right from the space.
SpaceX has just been given permission to proceed with its ambitious idea of launching 7,518 more satellite into space, to join its already lineup of 4,409 satellites that will be beaming down the internet connection. These ridiculously huge numbers of satellites will be used to enable SpaceX’s Starlink communication system to provide broadband access to any surface on Earth. That is including places with conventional telecommunication infrastructure is not feasible to establish.
Gigabit-per-second Internet connection
Starlink claims that once the project is up and running, they will be able to connect internet users on the ground with internet speeds of up to gigabits-per-seconds. They go further to state that the final constellation will have a connection speeds of up to 32 terabytes per second.
A case or reinventing the wheel perhaps?
By no measure is SpaceX idea a novel one. There has, in fact, all along been satellites in space beaming down internet connection, but their use has not grown to be popular due to several challenges they face. Compared to earthbound telecommunication lines, satellite communication makes the signal travel much longer distance. The fact that the satellite is at a good distance from Earth plays to discourage its use. As the signal will have to travel longer.
That is measured in milliseconds. Your typical broadband connection speed has a 20ms delay, while a satellite will have 550ms. Though SpaceX claims to have reduced the latency to between 25-30ms.
The SpaceX internet satellite will be orbiting at 340km (211.96 miles) high above the surface of the Earth. These satellites will be launched in such a high number due to the fact that they are not in a geosynchronous orbit.
