SpaceX successfully launched 60 Starlink satellites into the Earth’s lower orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Thursday, September 3.

It was the 12^th Starlink launch, bringing the number of the company’s satellites orbiting the Earth to 715. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s immediate goal is to deploy 1,584 satellites. The event means Elon Musk and his company is half-way towards their goal.

In fact, Musk aims to build an internet connectivity constellation to provide super-fast, low-latency internet service to consumers around the world including those located in the far-flung areas at an affordable price.

Starlink satellites capable of delivering over 100 Mbps download speeds

Kate Tice, a senior program reliability engineer at SpaceX confirmed that the recently launched batch of Starlink satellites delivered download speeds of more than 100 megabits per second (Mbps) based on the initial test of latency data.

Such download speed is “fast enough to stream multiple HD movies at once and still have [the] bandwidth to spare,” according to SpaceX in a tweet.

During the launch broadcast, Tice said, “We’re checking how fast data travels from the satellites to our customers, and then back to the rest of the internet. Initial results have been good.”

She added, “Our network, of course, is very much a work in progress. And over time, we will continue to add features to unlock the full capability of that network.”

The Falcon 9 rocket carried and released the Starlink satellites- each weighing 575 pounds—to the Low Earth Orbit, an area 210 miles above our planet. After completing its mission, the rocket headed back to Earth and made a successful landing on SpaceX’s “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship.

SpaceX expected to start offering limited internet services by the end of 2020

A total of 12,000 enabled Starlink satellites are expected to be operational by mid-2020. SpaceX is expecting to start offering limited internet services by the end of this year.

The new Starlink constellation is visible from earth. You can find the best viewing times at FINDSTARLINK.

Amazon is also building a Low Earth Orbit satellite constellation to provide reliable and affordable broadband service to communities without or with limited internet access worldwide. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved Amazon’s plan to deploy and operate a network of 3,236 satellites. The tech giant is investing $10 billion in this initiative called Project Kuiper.

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