Bloomberg Línea — The explosion of Elon Musk’s Starship four minutes after liftoff in Texas on Thursday morning marks just one incident for SpaceX, which so far in 2023 has launched hundreds of units of its Starlink satellite constellation into outer space.
According to data from the UN’s Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), so far in 2023 SpaceX, using its Falcon 9 rockets, has put 551 Starlink satellites into orbit on at least eight missions since January 19.
While the intentions of each platform are different (the Starship program seeks to eventually take people to the Moon or Mars, while Starlink is a commercial connectivity service), Musk sees both as inexhaustible providers of data for his space projects.
On Wednesday, during a conference call with investors and analysts to announce Tesla Inc.’s (TSLA) first-quarter 2023 results, Musk referred to his companies’ real-time data:
“(…) if there’s a company that’s got more real-time data than Tesla – I’m not sure, there’s any company on earth that has better real-time data than Tesla, except maybe SpaceX’s Starlink”.
The company said the data from the Starship mission will serve to analyse the program’s future.
With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,” Musk said on Twitter following the rocket’s explosion.
Other firms offering similar services to Starlink have also launched constellations this year, reports UNOOSA: Anglo-Indian company OneWeb (116 satellites), US-based Flock Y (38) and SpaceBee (12), some of them using SpaceX rockets.
In total, this year UNOOSA has recorded the launch of 836 assets into outer space, most of them being satellites of the Starlink constellation.
Considering that, on average, each Falcon9 rocket mission places 50 Starlink satellites in orbit, more than 420 launches of these rockets would have been accounted for since 2019 as UNOOSA reports 4,249 such assets.
As the Starlink business expands, this constellation will grow as the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has given SpaceX permission to launch 4,408 Starlink satellites in Ku-band, the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in the microwave range of frequencies from 12 to 18 GHz, as well as 7,500 second-generation satellites in V-band, ranging from 40 to 75 GHz.
The company also has an application before the FCC for about 25,000 next-generation (Gen2) Starlink satellites, but the US government said it will hold off on those permits for now until it determines that there is no impact on “other satellites and terrestrial operators from harmful interference and (to be able to) maintain a safe space environment, fostering competition and protecting spectrum and orbital resources for future use”.
For the time being, and perhaps anticipating what happened this Thursday with the Starship explosion, Musk responded to a wish for “good luck” from analysts and investors: “Thanks. You can’t have too much luck in the rocket business... that’s for sure.”
