Space Exploration Technologies Corporation aka SpaceX is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in California is already known for a couple of major advancements in the field of space exploration, etc. The company recently revealed its plans for space exploration to Mars, opening the possibility of landing on Mars. And now according to the new reports, the company has come up yet another plan which will benefit the world in its current state.
Earlier this week, the company filed an application for satellite space station authorizations with the U.S Federal Communications Commissions. Wondering what is it going to be this time? Well, in the filing, it laid out details of its plans fo the 4,425-strong satellite network. Yes, SpaceX wants to launch a total of 4,425 satellites into the orbit with altitudes ranging from 715 miles to 823 miles which are about 1,150 to 1,325 km.
Do make a note that these altitudes are above the International Space Station but below geostationary satellites. This plan for low orbits would greatly reduce the latency, which is one of the main issue with the existing satellite internet systems. In layman words, more the distance is, the data packets must travel great distances between Earth and satellites which is definitely going to result in delays for the users who are using the internet. Google also has something called as Project Loon where the mission is to provide access to remote rural areas.
The Project Loon uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 18 km (11 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 4G-LTE speeds. In this case, SpaceX is predicting its latencies to be between 25 and 35ms which are on-par with the wired internet services. If in case you think that is high or don’t have any idea on this, for reference, the current satellite ISPs have latencies of 600ms or more. Hence, this is going to be of great advantage. And this is not it; SpaceX is also promising that their satellites will have great impressive bandwidths, which is another area of concern currently with the satellite internet.
In its application, it is mentioned that each satellite will have a downlink capacity of 17 to 3Gbps, and with the initial deployment of about 800 satellites, their system will be able to cover the US and international broadband connectivity, which will see further development when they fully deploy and more capacity. Once it is done, the system will allow for a truly global coverage. Do make a note here that it might take a long time to finish this project and connect any users to the internet through this. However, once this is deployed, it will revolutionalize the way the internet is being used by us and many. Stay tuned for more info on this.