Lifeboat Foundation

Microsoft is partnering with SpaceX to connect the tech giant’s Azure cloud computing network to the growing Starlink satellite internet service offered by Elon Musk’s company, the companies announced Tuesday.

Starlink is SpaceX’s ambitious plan to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, designed to deliver high-speed internet to anywhere on the planet.

“The collaboration that we’re announcing today will allow us to work together to deliver new offerings for both the public and the private sector to deliver connectivity through Starlink for use on Azure,” SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a video. “Where it makes sense, we will work with [Microsoft]: co-selling to our mutual customers, co-selling to new enterprise and future customers.”

Starlink and SES will bring satellite to modular data centers in remote areas.

Piling Up

SpaceX has launched about 775 Starlink satellites so far but plans to have 42,000 by the time the constellation is complete. At a three percent failure rate — assuming it stays consistent — that amounts to 1,260 immobilized satellites waiting to smash into other stuff in space.

“I would say their failure rate is not egregious,” McDowell told Business Insider. “It’s not worse than anybody else’s failure rates. The concern is that even a normal failure rate in such a huge constellation is going to end up with a lot of bad space junk.”

SpaceX is targeting this weekend for its next Falcon 9 rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center, this time with another batch of Starlink internet satellites.

If schedules hold, teams will give the go-ahead for the 230-foot rocket to launch from pad 39A at 8:27 a.m. Sunday, the opening of an instantaneous window. It must launch at that time or delay to another day.

About eight minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s 162-foot first stage will target an autonomous landing on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX’s fleet of ships and the booster should return to Port Canaveral a few days later.

Ogba Educational Clinic championing STEM Education and Artificial Intelligence in Africa.

Officials said SpaceX is working on rocket-based delivery of military supplies around the globe just days after the news that it’s developing missile-tracking satellites.

Experts are worried about what could happen up in low-Earth orbit.

On Tuesday, LeoLabs, a company that monitors the paths of space junk in low-Earth orbit, announced on Twitter it was tracking a potential conjunction—that’s space-speak for a mid-orbit crash—tonight between a defunct Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket stage.

Elon Musk is looking to get caught up after several weeks marked by delays.

In 2016, I proposed LEO HTS Mega Constellation a viable solution for Australia’s broadband national coverage. I have been doing research on these constellations right from the beginning and they are inevitable!

Introduction

Utilizing the announced Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites constellations of OneWeb, SpaceX, LeoSat & Samsung to provide high speed connectivity to entire Australian continent with performance better than fiber networks. This project can eliminate high cost NBN roll out to scattered populations and will considerably improve disaster management. Providing high speed connectivity for mobile communication, internet, high resolution TV broadcast as well as utilizing technologies like IoT & Cloud for improvement in security, education, health, agriculture, livestock farming, mineral resources, wildlife, and environment without any coverage black-spots. This network will not require any infrastructure installations and will help the Government to generate revenues by issuing spectrum licenses to local as well as foreign investors for providing services directly to the end user.

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Nearly 400 ISPs qualify for auction, with SpaceX as the only LEO satellite ISP.