Elon Musk Wants To Give The World Faster Internet By Putting Over 4,000 Satellites Into Space

After sending a Tesla Roadster car in space, Elon Musk now wants to build a satellite-based Internet that covers the whole earth.

Yesterday, SpaceX launched two small prototype satellites on board the Falcon 9 rocket, kicking off a venture that Elon Musk hopes will let him interconnect the entire world.

The micro-satellites are for a project called Starlink, that’s been kept relatively under wraps. Basically, SpaceX is trying to build a web of satellites that will provide high-speed Internet connectivity to the whole world.

Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b are the first of the 4,425 microsatellites planned, which will be placed into geosynchronous orbit between 1,100 and 1,325 km above the Earth’s surface.

The idea is that using these satellites at a much lower orbit than regular communications satellites (35,000 km) can bring Internet connectivity with a much lower latency than possible before. Of course, because they’re so much closer to the Earth, the micro-satellites will have a much smaller range of coverage. That’s why such a large number of them are being put into orbit to form a web.

Once the first 800 satellites are operational, SpaceX will supposedly be able to “provide initial US and international coverage for broadband services,” the company says in its FCC application. “Deployment of the remainder of that constellation will complete coverage and add capacity around the world.”

But Starlink doesn’t end there. Once the more than 4,000 microsatellites are up and running, SpaceX hopes to launch another 7,518 of them into an even lower orbit of around 340 kilometers. This lower web would supposedly provide added capacity where needed around the world, “enabling the provision of high speed, high bandwidth, low latency broadband services that are truly competitive with terrestrial alternatives.”

Of course, the entire process takes time. SpaceX has only received FCC approval to launch two test satellites, with the entire project still pending approval. However, Elon Musk does hope to have his newer faster Internet up and running by 2025.