Sixty satellites for SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation are stacked in their payload fairing ahead of a planned May 15, 2019, launch. SpaceX's internet-satellite megaconstellation will start taking shape very soon. The company plans to launch 60 of its "Starlink" broadband satellites this week, likely on Wednesday (May 15), SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk announced via Twitter over the weekend. All 60 spacecraft are crammed into the payload fairing of a single Falcon 9 rocket, which will lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launch window on Wednesday runs from 10:30 p.m. EDT to midnight EDT (0230 to 0400 GMT on May 16), according to Spaceflight Now . Related: SpaceX's 1st Prototype Starlink Satellites Are Up and Running You can watch the launch here at Space.com when the time comes, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the spaceflight company . The five dozen satellites pretty much fill the cavernous fairing, as Musk showed in another tweet. He posted side-by-side photos of the Starlink craft in their fairing and his Tesla Roadster in its fairing in early 2018, before the car took flight on the first test mission of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. (The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy use fairings of the same size.) First 60 @SpaceX Starlink satellites loaded into Falcon fairing. Tight fit. pic.twitter.com/gZq8gHg9uKMay 12, 2019 See more Just two weeks after that February 2018 Falcon Heavy launch, a Falcon 9 sent the first two Starlink satellites skyward . But that duo, nicknamed Tintin-A and Tintin-B, were pathfinders; the 60 going up this week are "production-design" satellites, Musk said. And many more will follow these pioneers, if all goes according to plan. SpaceX eventually aims to loft thousands of Starlink satellites, which will provide relatively cheap internet access to people around the world. A minimum of six more 60-satellite launches will be required to provide "minor" Starlink coverage, while 12 more will boost the coverage to "moderate," Musk said in another tweet last weekend. And SpaceX isn't the only company that wants to provide space-based internet; for example, OneWeb and Amazon are both planning megaconstellations of their own.<doc-sep>A cascade of space junk could trap humans on Earth forever. Watch Your Step On Wednesday, SpaceX plans to launch its first batch of Starlink satellites, an artificial constellation intended to beam down high-speed internet service from orbit. It’s an aspirational mission, but there’s an unfortunate downside, according to Scientific American. The satellites could also, in a worst-case scenario, trigger a deadly cascade of space debris known as “Kessler syndrome,” which would fill space with so many hazards that humans are effectively trapped on Earth. “The worst case is: you launch all your satellites, you go bankrupt, and they all stay there,” European Space Agency researcher Stijn Lemmens told the magazine. “Then you have thousands of new satellites without a plan of getting them out of there. And you would have a Kessler-type of syndrome.” Mind The Gap SpaceX proactively took steps to avoid cluttering the skies with even more potentially dangerous space junk — SpaceX plans to launch the Starlink network to a lower altitude that most other satellites that orbit the Earth. Advertisement Advertisement Over time, that number will only climb — it will take thousands of years for the Starlink satellites to be pulled back down into the Earth’s atmosphere where they’ll safely incinerate upon re-entry, per SciAm. And in the meantime, according to the MIT Technology Review, proposed mega-constellations like Starlink will result in 67,000 potential collisions per year. “This is something we need to pay attention to,” Glenn Peterson, the Aerospace Corporation engineer who calculated the 67,000 annual collision rate, told SciAm. “We have to be proactive.” READ MORE: SpaceX’s Starlink Could Cause Cascades of Space Junk [Scientific American] More on Starlink: SpaceX Found a Way to Keep Its Satellites From Cluttering up Space Advertisement Advertisement As a Futurism reader, we invite you join the Singularity Global Community, our parent company’s forum to discuss futuristic science & technology with like-minded people from all over the world. It’s free to join, sign up now!<doc-sep>SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared a first look on Saturday of his company's internet satellites packed and ready for launch in a few days. These satellites represent SpaceX's ambitious plan to build an internet satellite network, known as Starlink. The company is one of several, including Jeff Bezos' Amazon, which are building these so called "constellations" of interconnected satellites to deliver high speed internet from space. "These are production design, unlike our earlier TinTin demo sats," Musk said in a thread of tweets, adding that it's a "tight fit" to get all 60 on top of a single SpaceX rocket. Musk tweet The full Starlink network would consist of 11,943 satellites flying close to the planet, closer than the International Space Station, in what is known as low Earth orbit. Little has been known about the SpaceX Starlink system, aside from tidbits gleaned from public filings and employees leaving the program. Musk fired the head of the Starlink program last year, four months after SpaceX launched its first two test satellites for Starlink. Musk later blamed layoffs at SpaceX in January in part due to Starlink as one of the company's "two absolutely insane projects." "SpaceX has to be incredibly spartan with expenditures until those programs reach fruition," Musk said in January.<doc-sep>By SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has published the first official photo of the company’s near-final Starlink design and confirmed that Falcon 9 will launch a staggering 60 satellites on May 15th. Known internally as Starlink v0.9, this mission will not be the first launch of operational satellites, but it will be the first internal SpaceX mission with a dedicated Falcon 9 launch. Additionally, the payload will be the heaviest yet launched by SpaceX, signifying an extraordinarily ambitious first step towards realizing the company’s ~12,000-satellite Starlink megaconstellation. First 60 @SpaceX Starlink satellites loaded into Falcon fairing. Tight fit. pic.twitter.com/gZq8gHg9uK — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2019 Rewriting the satellite design book Put simply, SpaceX’s Starlink v0.9 launch is extremely unique for several reasons. Aside from the unprecedented step of launching 60 spacecraft weighing ~13,000 kg (~30,000 lb) on a developmental mission, both the form factor of each satellite and the style of dispenser/payload adapter has never been seen before. SpaceX appears to have settled on a square dispenser with four separate quadrants for satellites. The satellites themselves look truly bizarre – it’s actually difficult to discern where one spacecraft stops and the next begins. Nevertheless, it appears that each Starlink satellite is a relatively thin rectangle, possibly with a squared top and bottom. It’s also possible that they are all around rectangular and that the dispenser instead has two main sections. Either way, the very fact that the Starlink v0.9 payload can scarcely be parsed into recognizable satellites is thrilling. Aside from the rise of smallsats and cubesats, satellite design and engineering has been relatively stagnant for decades, particularly with respect to form factors and structural layouts. Most modern satellites are simply square-ish boxes with electronics inside and payloads bolted on the outside. The second phase of Starlink testing – 60 advanced satellites – in a single fairing. (SpaceX) By all appearances, SpaceX’s Starlink beta satellites suffer from no such tried-and-true design tropes. This is a somewhat calculated risk, as those current tried-and-true satellite design rules are conservative but decidedly proven over dozens of years of orbital experience. To throw out the satellite design textbook is to invite an increased potential for failure in order to pursue entirely new ways of thinking, designing, building, and launching spacecraft. Even relative to fairly innovative constellations like the SpaceX-launched Iridium NEXT and OneWeb look downright mundane when examined alongside SpaceX’s inaugural Borg-cube-esque payload. SpaceX’s Starlink layout looks like nothing seen before. At the same time, it appears that the bizarre, new approach has likely maximized the density and stacking efficiency of dozens of satellites to an unprecedented degree. Despite using the same exact Falcon fairing that has been standard for years, SpaceX has managed to cram 60 spacecraft – each weighing around 200-300 kg – into just the bottom two-thirds of the fairing, leaving a considerable amount of unused volume for future expansion. According to President and COO Gwynne Shotwell, Starlink v0.9 satellites are extremely close to SpaceX’s true final design. However, they are still considered by SpaceX to be a “test batch” of satellites and do not have the optical (laser) interlinks that will be a critical part of Starlink’s unique constellation design. The mission is currently scheduled to launch at 10:30 pm EDT (02:30 UTC), May 15th and will have a flexible four-hour window. The mission will be preceded by a routine Falcon 9 static fire no earlier than (NET) May 13th. Update: It is flat-packed. No dispenser. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2019 According to Musk, SpaceX has actually entirely gotten rid of a satellite-dispenser middle-man, instead relying on the structure of the satellites themselves to act as their own launch adapters and deployment mechanisms. This has been done in the past on a far smaller scale – typically with 2-3 several-ton satellites – but has never been attempted at the scale SpaceX is just days away from launching. Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reveals radical Starlink redesign for 60-satellite launch<doc-sep>
SpaceX chief Elon Musk has unveiled the first batch of internet satellites that the company plans to fire into space from Cape Canaveral in the coming days. The 60 satellites, packed on a Falcon 9 rocket and ready to go, will mark the initial deployment for Musk’s attention-grabbing Starlink project that over time will send around 12,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit to create a broadband network capable of providing low-cost, high-speed global internet coverage. In a series of tweets posted over the weekend, Musk included a photo (below) of the 60 satellites placed inside the nose cone of the rocket that will carry them into orbit. Musk described it as a “tight fit.” First 60 @SpaceX Starlink satellites loaded into Falcon fairing. Tight fit. pic.twitter.com/gZq8gHg9uK — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2019 In a bid to manage expectations, the SpaceX boss commented that “much will likely go wrong on 1st mission.” He added that six further launches, each with 60 satellites, would be needed for “minor” internet coverage, and a further 12 launches for “moderate” coverage. Specifically, SpaceX plans to start off with the deployment of 4,425 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit followed by an additional 7,518 satellites at a lower orbit. The higher satellites will operate at an altitude of between 690 miles (1,110 km) and 823 miles (1,325 km) and act as the backbone of the Starlink broadband service, while the other satellites will be deployed at altitudes of between 208 miles (335 km) and 215 miles (346 km) and be used to boost capacity and lower latency, particularly in locations that are heavily populated. In November 2018, the Federal Communications Commission greenlit the Starlink plan, though it stipulated that SpaceX must launch 50 percent of its proposed satellites within six years and all of them within nine years, unless a waiver is granted. To date, SpaceX has deployed only two test satellites for Starlink, called Tintin A and Tintin B. The deployment, which took place in February 2018, was deemed a success, and allowed Musk’s space company to continue with preparations for this week’s far bigger deployment that in many ways marks the true beginning of the ambitious project. SpaceX estimates the entire Starlink project will cost around $10 billion, which covers launch costs, as well as the design and setup of the necessary infrastructure to create its global broadband network. And it isn’t the only company with its eye on connecting the world using satellites, with Facebook, Amazon, and SoftBank-backed OneWeb, for example, embarking on their own separate projects. Editors' Recommendations