SpaceX has launched 1,900 Starlink satellites into space and has a license to deploy a constellation made up of over 12,000 satellites.
Elon Musk’s broadband satellite company, Starlink, has been constantly launching more satellites into orbit in order to try and keep up with demand for the service. As more people are added to the satellite based internet service, the need for more satellites is essential to being able to provide the bandwidth for the speeds that have made it so popular.
In a recent report by Ookla, it was pointed out that speeds of Starlink’s internet had seemed to slow in certain areas as more people were being added. So, it is no surprise that Musk has been eager to launch additional satellites into orbit to try and keep up. As of right now, SpaceX has launched 1,900 Starlink satellites into space and has a license to deploy a constellation made up of over 12,000 satellites.
Tesla’s green ambitions tested in New Caledonia
A tiny French territory between Australia and Fiji is at the center of a key test over whether Western carmakers can sidestep China’s dominance over battery power and establish sustainable practices.
Tesla, through a partnership with a large nickel mine in New Caledonia, will directly source much of the key mineral, a major step in what the company says is a broader effort to take control of its supply chain and ensure that its cars are made in an environmentally and socially responsible fashion.
If accomplished, Tesla could lead the way in setting global standards for the electric vehicle revolution, in yet another convention-defying move by the company’s founder, Elon Musk. If the effort fails, it will serve as a cautionary tale for how difficult it is to achieve true sustainability.
Sidestepping China: Most of the world’s nickel destined for electric vehicle batteries is processed in one place: China. Tesla has plans to produce batteries in Texas and Germany, which would help avoid an overreliance on China.
The shift: Some of Tesla’s cars run on batteries made with nickel processed by a Japanese company that has sourced much of its nickel from places like the Philippines, Indonesia and Madagascar, where allegations of environmental and labor breaches are rife.
Elon Musk criticised after China space complaint to UN
Elon Musk is facing a social media backlash after China complained that its space station was forced to avoid collisions with satellites launched by his Starlink Internet Services project.
The country’s space station had two “close encounters” with Starlink satellites this year, Beijing claimed. The incidents behind the complaints, lodged with the UN’s space agency, have not yet been independently verified.
Starlink is a satellite internet network operated by Mr Musk’s SpaceX. Mr Musk is well known in China even as his electric carmaker Tesla comes under growing scrutiny from regulators.
The incidents occurred on 1 July and 21 October, according to a document submitted by China this month to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
But speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Musk defended himself, saying that “tens of billions” of satellites can be accommodated in orbits close to Earth.
He said: “Space is just extremely enormous, and satellites are very tiny.”
The SpaceX CEO rejected suggestions that his Starlink project was effectively blocking the entry of competitors to the satellite industry, saying that there is plenty of room in the Earth’s orbit for more satellites.
He said: “This is not some situation where we’re effectively blocking others in any way. We’ve not blocked anyone from doing anything, nor do we expect to.”A couple of thousand satellites is nothing. It’s like, hey, here’s a couple of thousand of cars on Earth, it’s nothing.” “A couple of thousand satellites is nothing. It’s like, hey, here’s a couple of thousand of cars on Earth, it’s nothing.”
ELON MUSK – Profile
Elon Reeve Musk FRS (born June 28, 1971) is an entrepreneur and business magnate. He is the founder, CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; early-stage investor, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. With an estimated net worth of around US$280 billion as of December 2021, Musk is the wealthiest person in the world.
Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father, and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 17 to avoid conscription.
He was enrolled at Queen’s University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics, then moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal.
The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. The same year, Musk co-founded online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. The company was bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO and CTO. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008.
In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence.
In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.