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Elon Musk Shares Crucial Starlink Data That Will Enable Big Leap Over Global Broadband

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation’s (SpaceX) ch8ef executive officer Mr. Elon Musk has shared the latest details for his company’s Starlink satellite internet constellation. Starlink is SpaceX’s internet service which uses low Earth orbit (LEO) small satellites to beam down the Internet to its users. Due to a rapid cadence of launches, SpaceX has ensured that Starlink is the world’s largest internet constellation in service, and the company is currently upgrading the satellites with laser based connectivity. This will allow Starlink to expand its coverage and reach areas that cannot be served without ground stations to connect the satellites and the users to internet servers.

Starlink Will Soon Start To Operate Laser Links Between Satellites Confirms Musk

Mr. Musk shared the latest details through his social media platform Twitter, as he outlined the number of Starlink satellites currently in orbit and his company’s plans to activate newer spacecraft capable of optical communication. These are crucial for evaluating the internet service’s current capacity, which has come under fire from rivals in proceedings for spectrum sharing and licensing currently underway at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Elon Musk Wants to Bring You Better In-Flight WiFi

Elon Musk—via Starlink, a division of SpaceX—is in talks with “several” airlines to provide in-flight WiFi for passengers. His plan is to use Starlink’s ever-growing megaconstellation of satellites to equip customers with better WiFi while they fly the friendly skies.

Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink and commercial sales, gave out details on the ambitious plan during a panel at the Connected Aviation Intelligence Summit on Wednesday.

Age Expert Answers Aging Questions From Twitter | Tech Support

I’ve posted some vids of her before. But here she says at 3:52 that she thinks stopping the aging process is farfetched.


Dr. Morgan Levine, a professor who specializes in the biology of aging, answers the internet’s burning questions about aging. Is there anyway to stop aging? Is aging a disease? Do you age slower in space? Dr. Levine answers all these questions and much more!

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Chipmakers are set to be ‘winners’ as the metaverse takes off

The metaverse, which requires a massive amount of computing power, is set to benefit global chipmakers— but other tech-related industries could also gain from it, analysts say.

Widely seen as the next generation of the internet, the metaverse refers broadly to a virtual world where humans interact through three-dimensional avatars that can be controlled via virtual reality headsets like Oculus.

Through the metaverse, users can engage in virtual activities such as gaming, virtual concerts or live sports.

SpaceX goes all-in on Starship configuration for second-gen Starlink

This is interesting. It looks like SpaceX is abandoning their backup plan to launch V2.0 Starlink satellites with the Falcon 9 and instead they are going to launch them with Starship instead. They are also saying they will be ready to launch them as soon as 2 months from now. This confirms the rumors that I’ve been hearing that the Raptor 2 engine for Starship is much more stable than the Raptor 1 engines were.

Note that this means they are planning on launching satellites before they have perfected landing but this makes sense since they did the same with the Falcon 9, crashing and burning 19 rockets in a row until they were able to land part of one. It should take 5 or less orbital attempts to land the Starship booster stage. (They will lose a ton of engines with the booster stage so this will be a high priority to get working.)


TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX has dropped a plan to use Falcon 9 to launch the 30,000 satellites in its proposed second-generation Starlink broadband constellation, and is instead focusing on a configuration leveraging its upcoming Starship vehicle.

The decision follows development progress that SpaceX said exceeded the company’s expectations and means it could start “launching the Gen2 system as early as March 2022,” SpaceX lawyer William Wiltshire said in a Jan. 7 letter to the Federal Communications Commission.

Starship missions are subject to a favorable environmental review into SpaceX’s launch facility at Boca Chica, Texas, which the Federal Aviation Administration expects to complete Feb. 28.

A silicon photonic-electronic neural network that could enhance submarine transmission systems

We are currently witnessing an explosion of network traffic. Numerous emerging services and applications, such as cloud services, video streaming platforms and the Internet of Things (IOT), are further increasing the demand for high-capacity communications. Optical communication systems, technologies that transfer information optically using fibers, are the backbone of today’s communication networks of fixed-line, wireless infrastructure and data centers.

Over the past decade, the growth of the internet was enabled by a technique known as digital signal processing (DSP), which can help to reduce transmission distortions. However, DSP is currently implemented using CMOS integrated circuits (ICs), thus it relies heavily on Moore’s Law, which has approached its limits in terms of power dissipation, density and feasible engineering solutions.

As a result, distortions caused by a phenomenon known as fiber nonlinearity cannot be compensated by DSP, as this would require too much computation power and resources. Fiber nonlinearities remain the major limiting effect on long-distance transmission systems.

SpaceX conducts first orbital launch of 2022 with Starlink Group 4–5

SpaceX launched another batch of Starlink satellites to the fourth shell of the constellation for the first global orbital launch attempt of the year.

Lifting off from historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), the Starlink Group 4–5 mission lifted 49 Starlink v1.5 satellites southeastward from Kennedy into a 210 × 339 km low Earth orbit with an inclination of 53.22 degrees.

Following payload separation, the satellites will slowly raise their orbit until they are in their operational altitude of 540 km. This process takes several months due to the low-thrust but high-efficiency Krypton ion thrusters on the Starlink satellites.

Baidu to launch Level 2 autonomous car in 2023

China’s technology giant Baidu is stepping up its efforts to expand in the autonomous vehicle segment with the commercial launch of a car model with Level-2 self-driving technology next year.

Last week the company’s CEO Robin Li confirmed that Jidu Auto, Baidu’s joint venture with local automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, plans to begin mass production of its first electric vehicle (EV) with Level-2 autonomous driving technologies in 2023. The vehicle’s self-driving system is powered by Nvidia chips and is scheduled to be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in April of this year.

Baidu, known widely as an internet search engine and artificial intelligence company, is targeting the autonomous vehicle segment as a key growth industry and is in the process of rolling out autonomous taxi services across China.

5G is Poised to Change Everything, from Farming to Surgery

With 5G, apps and services that we can’t even imagine will be possible.

What good is a smart toaster if it can’t connect to the network?

CES 2022 is packed with tech that needs lightning-fast connection to the internet. That’s one reason why so many people at the trade show in Las Vegas are laser-focused on 5G. A handful of industry leaders got together at the conference to discuss the opportunities and challenges of making tech that works with the new global wireless standard.

J. David Grossman, VP Regulatory Affairs Consumer Technology Association, led the discussion. He was joined by John Godfrey, senior VP of Public Policy at Samsung Electronics, Inc; Asad Ramzanali, Legislative Director at the Office of Congresswoman Annna Eshoo; Emily Hebein, Legislative Assistant for Representative Bob Latta; and Deanna Kovar VP, Production & Precision Ag Production Systems at John Deere.

The panel discussedhow 5G is expected to transform tech innovation — and how federal, state, and local policy can create the right conditions for success.

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