Consumer Electronics

Elon Musk Plans to Have 42,000 Satellites Circling the Earth

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: June 9, 2024 6:16 am

Last Updated: June 10, 2024 7:19 am

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• Elon Musk plans to eventually have 42,000 Starlink satellites circling the Earth.

Elon Musk is best known for his positions as CEO of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), the company that brought electric vehicles (EVs) to the masses, and SpaceX, the most active commercial rocket company that dominated the industry, as well as being the head of Neuralink, which connects computers to the brain. Less well-known is his plan to eventually have 42,000 satellites circling the Earth.

To give Musk’s plan some context, less than 10,000 satellites circle the world today. The number will grow, but the growth rate would be modest without Musk’s Starlink satellite additions.

Starlink is a satellite-based broadband network. When it is finished, everyone in the world, on paper, will have access to the internet. The service reaches much of the world today. PCMag reports, “Starlink solves a problem that has plagued modern broadband for years: How to reach the rural and remote users who aren’t accessible to traditional cable and fiber internet.” At some point, this coverage will be available in the most remote places in the world. Starlink has just added eight African nations to its footprint.

Starlink has been built on Musk’s SpaceX rockets. One of its huge Falcon 9 rockets recently released another 20 Spacelink satellites into low orbit. Musk has used one of his companies to make a second company possible.

It has been said, often, that Musk’s ambitions don’t have boundaries. Starlink is more proof of that.

This is the largest rocket launched into space.

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