Dec 26 (Reuters) — SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Monday that the company is now close to having 100 active Starlinks, the firm’s satellite internet service, in Iran, three months after he tweeted he would activate the service there amid protests around the Islamic country.
Musk said, “approaching 100 starlinks active in Iran”, in a tweet on Monday.
The billionaire had said in September that he would activate Starlink in Iran as part of a U.S.-backed effort “to advance internet freedom and the free flow of information” to Iranians.
About Joe and CisLunar. “We envision a future where humanity is enabled and empowered to expand beyond Earth to permanently and sustainably settle the Solar System. A dynamic and robust industrial in-space economy is essential to this future. CisLunar Industries is creating the critical metal processing capabilities required to support the in-space industrial value chain.”
An interesting thing is happening at SpaceX. Last year they did $2 billion in revenue and Elon had mentioned that at most they could do $3 billion/year in revenue launching stuff for others.
But SpaceX has now exceeded one million subscribers for Starlink which equals to about $2 billion/year in additional revenue. So it is likely that next year that the majority of SpaceX’s revenue will be coming from Starlink even though SpaceX is launching more stuff for customers than ever before.
Starlink’s revenue should also skyrocket once Starship is able to launch Starlink 2.0 satellites which will happen at some point next year.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced that its Starlink satellite internet service provider has over a million active subscribers.
According to an FCC filing earlier this month, SpaceX are looking to get permission to launch the next generation of its Starlink satellites very soon.
A filing with the FCC suggests that SpaceX hopes to launch a new Starlink broadband satellite system soon. This could help the company keep up with the increase in demand.
The company wants to connect current user terminals to upcoming satellites in geosynchronous orbit (NGSO) and needs a special temporary authorization (STA) from the FCC for 60 days. If granted, SpaceX could begin providing Gen 2 services while the FCC investigates its request for longer-term authority.
After a successful test flight of NASA’s Artemis-1 moon mission, the space agency now turns its attention to returning Americans to the moon within two to three years. But the U.S. is not the only country with lunar ambitions. China is aggressively pursuing it own plans to land astronauts on the moon and build out a permanent base. Both countries openly talk about the need to have a military presence in space to defend against the other. Already, a dangerous cold war cat-and-mouse game involving U.S., Russian and Chinese satellites plays out every day. NBC News goes in-depth to explore the challenges in a potential battlefield that is complex, congested and contested.
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SAN FRANCISCO – EOI Space, the Earth-observation startup formerly known as Earth Observant, attracted its first major customer for ultra-high-resolution imagery drawn from a constellation of satellites destined for very low Earth orbit.
NTT Data, part of the Tokyo-based technology company NTT Group, is acquiring 2.5 percent of EOI plus exclusive rights to sell EOI satellite imagery in Japan, one of the world’s largest Earth-observation markets.
NTT Data is the first partner to sign up for priority access to EOI imagery and services. EOI plans to work with other organizations and governments across the globe, but the NTT Data contract is an important one.
The first satellite specifically designed to conduct a global survey of Earth’s surface water has taken to the skies.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite before dawn on Wednesday (Dec. 16) from Space Launch Complex-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first mission to survey nearly all of the water on Earth’s surface has launched.
The international Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission, known as SWOT, lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 6:46 a.m. ET on Friday. The first stage of the rocket successfully landed back on Earth at 6:54 a.m. ET.
The mission was also China’s first liftoff of a commercially developed liquid propellant rocket.
Chinese launch company LandSpace was touted to be akin to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. They were preparing a satellite launch that could beat Musk’s company with a methane-fueled rocket, reported Bloomberg.
Unfortunately, on Wednesday, the world’s first methane-fueled expendable rocket to be launched toward orbit failed to reach its goal. Hopes were high as the mission was also China’s first liftoff of a commercially developed liquid propellant rocket.
