Elon Musk teases next-gen Starlink satellites

SAN FRANCISCO: Tech billionaire Elon Musk has shared a slideshow from a recent SpaceX all-hands meeting, revealing the company's current priorities, sources of pride, and the first official renders of a few future projects.

According to Musk's slide deck, SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet constellation has secured close to half a million customers in 32 countries - two and a half years after operational satellite launches began. The constellation has almost 2,400 working satellites in orbit, of which almost 1800 are operational, reports Teslarati.

There is a good chance that half of all active satellites will be owned and operated by SpaceX within the next few months. SpaceX has also delivered more than 15,000 Starlink dishes to war-torn Ukraine and announced its first airline connectivity partnerships within the last few months, the report said.

The report also mentioned that the last few months have been a landmark period for SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.

For the first time ever, the company is actually matching or exceeding extremely lofty launch cadence targets publicly revealed by Musk earlier this year. In the first five months of 2022, SpaceX has completed 22 successful launches, the report said.

In the last seven months, SpaceX has completed 30 launches. SpaceX also has at least five launches nominally planned for June, meaning that the company is on track to launch just over once per week in the first half of the year after Elon Musk revealed a goal of 52-60 launches in 2022, it added.

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft continue to excel, as well. Cargo Dragon is on the brink of its 26th space station cargo delivery, while Crew Dragon remains the US' only way to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station it spent tens of billions of dollars to help build. Musk on Monday said his space venture SpaceX aims to build over 1,000 Starships to transport life to Mars.

The Tesla CEO stated that making life multiplanetary will help backup the ecosystems on Earth. He added that apart from humans, no other species can transport life to Mars.

Referring to Biblical patriarch Noah who built an Ark that survived the great flood on Earth, Musk said his Starship models will be "modern Noah's Arks", that can save "life from a calamity on Earth". (IANS)

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