starlink

The government shutdown is starting to have cosmic consequences

blue origin, Commercial space, Federal Aviation Administration, launch, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / Mike M. / November 8, 2025

The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during “peak hours” of air traffic.

The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 “high impact airports” across the country in a phased approach beginning Friday. The agency said the order from the FAA’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is aimed at addressing “safety risks and delays presented by air traffic controller staffing constraints caused by the continued lapse in appropriations.”

The government considers air traffic controllers essential workers, so they remain on the job without pay until Congress passes a federal budget and President Donald Trump signs it into law. The shutdown’s effects, which affected federal workers most severely at first, are now rippling across the broader economy.

Sharing the airspace

Vehicles traveling to and from space share the skies with aircraft, requiring close coordination with air traffic controllers to clear airspace for rocket launches and reentries. The FAA said its order restricting commercial air traffic, launches, and reentries is intended to “ensure the safety of aircraft and the efficiency of the [National Airspace System].”

In a statement explaining the order, the FAA said the air traffic control system is “stressed” due to the shutdown.

“With continued delays and unpredictable staffing shortages, which are driving fatigue, risk is further increasing, and the FAA is concerned with the system’s ability to maintain the current volume of operations,” the regulator said. “Accordingly, the FAA has determined additional mitigation is necessary.”

Beginning Monday, the FAA said commercial space launches will only be permitted between 10 pm and 6 am local time, when the national airspace is most calm. The order restricts commercial reentries to the same overnight timeframe. The FAA licenses all commercial launches and reentries.

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Elon Musk on data centers in orbit: “SpaceX will be doing this”

data centers, Space, spacex, starlink / 9u50fv / October 31, 2025

Interest is growing rapidly

“The amount of momentum from heavyweights in the tech industry is very much worth paying attention to,” said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, in an interview. “If they start putting money behind it, we could see another transformation of what’s done in space.”

The essential function of a data center is to store, process, and transmit data. Historically, satellites have already done a lot of this, Henry said. Telecommunications satellites specialize in transmitting data. Imaging satellites store a lot of data and then dump it when they pass over ground stations. In recent years, onboard computers have gotten more sophisticated at processing data. Data centers in space could represent the next evolution of that.

Critics rightly note that it would require very large satellites with extensive solar panels to power data centers that rival ground-based infrastructure. However, SpaceX’s Starlink V3 satellites are unlike any previous space-based technology, Henry said.

A lot more capacity

SpaceX’s current Starlink V2 mini satellites have a maximum downlink capacity of approximately 100 Gbps. The V3 satellite is expected to increase this capacity by a factor of 10, to 1 Tbps. This is not unprecedented in satellite capacity, but it certainly is at scale.

For example, Viasat contracted with Boeing for the better part of a decade, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, to build Viasat-3, a geostationary satellite with a capacity of 1 Tbps. This single satellite may launch next week on an Atlas V rocket.

SpaceX plans to launch dozens of Starlink V3 satellites—Henry estimates the number is about 60—on each Starship rocket launch. Those launches could occur as soon as the first half of 2026, as SpaceX has already tested a satellite dispenser on its Starship vehicle.

“Nothing else in the rest of the satellite industry that comes close to that amount of capacity,” Henry said.

Exactly what “scaling up” Starlink V3 satellites might look like is not clear, but it doesn’t seem silly to expect it could happen. The very first operational Starlink satellites launched a little more than half a decade ago with a mass of about 300 kg and a capacity of 15Gbps. Starlink V3 satellites will likely mass 1,500 kg.

Elon Musk on data centers in orbit: “SpaceX will be doing this” Read More »

Satellite operators will soon join airlines in using Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi

Commercial space, muon space, Space, spacex, starlink / Kelly Newman / October 22, 2025

So long, data limits

Lasers have other benefits over ground stations. Optical links offer significantly more throughput than traditional radio communication systems, and they’re not constrained by regulations on radio spectrum usage.

“What it does for our customers and for the company is we are able to get more than 10x, maybe even 50x, the amount of data that they’re able to bring down, and we’re able to offer them that on a latency of nearly instant,” Stang said in an interview with Ars.

SpaceX’s mini-lasers are designed to achieve link speeds of 25Gbps at distances up to 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers). These speeds will “open new business models” for satellite operators who can now rely on the same “Internet speed and responsiveness as cloud providers and telecom networks on the ground,” Muon said in a statement.

Muon’s platform, called Halo, comes in different sizes, with satellites ranging up to a half-ton. “With persistent optical broadband, Muon Halo satellites will move from being isolated vehicles to becoming active, real‑time nodes on Starlink’s global network,” Stang said in a press release. “That shift transforms how missions are designed and how fast insights flow to decision‑makers on Earth.”

Muon said the first laser-equipped satellite will launch in early 2027 for an undisclosed customer.

“We like to believe part of why SpaceX trusts us to be the ones to be able to lead on this is because our system is designed to really deal with very different levels of requirements,” Smirin said. “As far as we’re aware, this is the first integration into a satellite. We have a ton of interest from commercial customers for our capabilities in general, and we expect this should just boost that quite significantly.”

FireSat is one of the missions where Starlink connectivity would have an impact by rapidly informing first responders of a wildfire, Smirin said. According to Muon, using satellite laser links would cut FireSat data latency from an average of 20 minutes to near real-time.

“It’s not just for the initial detection,” Smirin said. “It’s also once a fire is ongoing, [cutting] the time and the latency for seeing the intensity and direction of the fire, and being able to update that in near real-time. It has incredible value to incident commanders on the ground, because they’re trying to figure out a way to position their equipment and their people.”

Thinking big

Ubiquitous connectivity in space could eventually lead to new types of missions. “Now, you’ve got a data center in space,” Smirin said. “You can do AI there. You can connect with data centers on the ground.”

While this first agreement between Muon and SpaceX covers commercial data relay, it’s easy to imagine other applications, such as continuous live drone-like high-resolution streaming video from space for surveillance or weather monitoring. Live video from space has historically been limited to human spaceflight missions or rocket-mounted cameras that operate for a short time.

One example of that is the dazzling live video beamed back to Earth, through Starlink, from SpaceX’s Starship rockets. The laser terminals on Starship operate through the extreme heat of reentry, returning streaming video as plasma envelops the vehicle. This environment routinely causes radio blackouts for other spacecraft as they reenter the atmosphere. With optical links, that’s no longer a problem.

“This starts to enable a whole new category of capabilities, much the same way as when terrestrial computers went from dial-up to broadband,” Smirin said. “You knew what it could do, but we blew through bulletin boards very quickly to many different applications.”

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Musk’s X posts on ketamine, Putin spur release of his security clearances

department of government efficiency, doge, elon musk, Policy, spacex, starlink, Twitter, vladimir putin, X / Shannon Garcia / October 9, 2025

“A disclosure, even with redactions, will reveal whether a security clearance was granted with or without conditions or a waiver,” DCSA argued.

Ultimately, DCSA failed to prove that Musk risked “embarrassment or humiliation” not only if the public learned what specific conditions or waivers applied to Musk’s clearances but also if there were any conditions or waivers at all, Cote wrote.

Three cases that DCSA cited to support this position—including a case where victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking scheme had a substantial privacy interest in non-disclosure of detailed records—do not support the government’s logic, Cote said. The judge explained that the disclosures would not have affected the privacy rights of any third parties, emphasizing that “Musk’s diminished privacy interest is underscored by the limited information plaintiffs sought in their FOIA request.”

Musk’s X posts discussing his occasional use of prescription ketamine and his disclosure that smoking marijuana on a podcast prompted NASA requirements for random drug testing, Cote wrote, “only enhance” the public’s interest in how Musk’s security clearances were vetted. Additionally, Musk has posted about speaking with Vladimir Putin, prompting substantial public interest in how his foreign contacts may or may not restrict his security clearances. More than 2 million people viewed Musk’s X posts on these subjects, the judge wrote, noting that:

It is undisputed that drug use and foreign contacts are two factors DCSA considers when determining whether to impose conditions or waivers on a security clearance grant. DCSA fails to explain why, given Musk’s own, extensive disclosures, the mere disclosure that a condition or waiver exists (or that no condition or waiver exists) would subject him to ’embarrassment or humiliation.

Rather, for the public, “the list of Musk’s security clearances, including any conditions or waivers, could provide meaningful insight into DCSA’s performance of that duty and responses to Musk’s admissions, if any,” Cote wrote.

In a footnote, Cote said that this substantial public interest existed before Musk became a special government employee, ruling that DCSA was wrong to block the disclosures seeking information on Musk as a major government contractor. Her ruling likely paves the way for the NYT or other news organizations to submit FOIA requests for a list of Musk’s clearances while he helmed DOGE.

It’s not immediately clear when the NYT will receive the list they requested in 2024, but the government has until October 17 to request redactions before it’s publicized.

“The Times brought this case because the public has a right to know about how the government conducts itself,” Charlie Stadtlander, an NYT spokesperson, said. “The decision reaffirms that fundamental principle and we look forward to receiving the document at issue.”

Musk’s X posts on ketamine, Putin spur release of his security clearances Read More »

Elon Musk tries to make Apple and mobile carriers regret choosing Starlink rivals

Apple, ast spacemobile, AT&T, Features, globalstar, IPhone, Policy, Space, spacex, starlink, T-Mobile, verizon / Beth Washington / October 6, 2025

SpaceX holds spectrum licenses for the Starlink fixed Internet service for homes and businesses. Adding the EchoStar spectrum will make its holdings suitable for mobile service.

“SpaceX currently holds no terrestrial spectrum authorizations and no license to use spectrum allocated on a primary basis to MSS,” the company’s FCC filing said. “Its only authorization to provide any form of mobile service is an authorization for secondary SCS [Supplemental Coverage from Space] operations in spectrum licensed to T-Mobile.”

Starlink unlikely to dethrone major carriers

SpaceX’s spectrum purchase doesn’t make it likely that Starlink will become a fourth major carrier. Grand claims of that sort are “complete nonsense,” wrote industry analyst Dean Bubley. “Apart from anything else, there’s one very obvious physical obstacle: walls and roofs,” he wrote. “Space-based wireless, even if it’s at frequencies supported in normal smartphones, won’t work properly indoors. And uplink from devices to satellites will be even worse.”

When you’re indoors, “there’s more attenuation of the signal,” resulting in lower data rates, Farrar said. “You might not even get megabits per second indoors, unless you are going to go onto a home Starlink broadband network,” he said. “You might only be able to get hundreds of kilobits per second in an obstructed area.”

The Mach33 analyst firm is more bullish than others regarding Starlink’s potential cellular capabilities. “With AWS-4/H-block and V3 [satellites], Starlink DTC is no longer niche, it’s a path to genuine MNO competition. Watch for retail mobile bundles, handset support, and urban hardware as the signals of that pivot,” the firm said.

Mach33’s optimism is based in part on the expectation that SpaceX will make more deals. “DTC isn’t just a coverage filler, it’s a springboard. It enables alternative growth routes; M&A, spectrum deals, subleasing capacity in denser markets, or technical solutions like mini-towers that extend Starlink into neighborhoods,” the group’s analysis said.

The amount of spectrum SpaceX is buying from EchoStar is just a fraction of what the national carriers control. There is “about 1.1 GHz of licensed spectrum currently allocated to mobile operators,” wireless lobby group CTIA said in a January 2025 report. The group also says the cellular industry has over 432,000 active cell sites around the US.

What Starlink can offer cellular users “is nothing compared to the capacity of today’s 5G networks,” but it would be useful “in less populated areas or where you cannot get coverage,” Rysavy said.

Starlink has about 8,500 satellites in orbit. Rysavy estimated in a July 2025 report that about 280 of them are over the United States at any given time. These satellites are mostly providing fixed Internet service in which an antenna is placed outside a building so that people can use Wi-Fi indoors.

SpaceX’s FCC filing said the EchoStar spectrum’s mix of terrestrial and satellite frequencies will be ideal for Starlink.

“By acquiring EchoStar’s market-access authorization for 2 GHz MSS as well as its terrestrial AWS-4 licenses, SpaceX will be able to deploy a hybrid satellite and terrestrial network, just as the Commission envisioned EchoStar would do,” SpaceX said. “Consistent with the Commission’s finding that potential interference between MSS and terrestrial mobile service can best be managed by enabling a single licensee to control both networks, assignment of the AWS-4 spectrum is critical to enable SpaceX to deploy robust MSS service in this band.”

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China’s Guowang megaconstellation is more than another version of Starlink

china, Features, guowang, launch, long march, megaconstellation, military space, satnet, Science, Space, starlink / Kelly Newman / August 20, 2025

“This is a strategy to keep the US from intervening… that’s what their space architecture is designed to do.”

Spectators take photos as a Long March 8A rocket carrying a group of Guowang satellites blasts off from the Hainan commercial launch site on July 30, 2025, in Wenchang, China. Credit: Liu Guoxing/VCG via Getty Images

US defense officials have long worried that China’s Guowang satellite network might give the Chinese military access to the kind of ubiquitous connectivity US forces now enjoy with SpaceX’s Starlink network.

It turns out the Guowang constellation could offer a lot more than a homemade Chinese alternative to Starlink’s high-speed consumer-grade broadband service. China has disclosed little information about the Guowang network, but there’s mounting evidence that the satellites may provide Chinese military forces a tactical edge in any future armed conflict in the Western Pacific.

The megaconstellation is managed by a secretive company called China SatNet, which was established by the Chinese government in 2021. SatNet has released little information since its formation, and the group doesn’t have a website. Chinese officials have not detailed any of the satellites’ capabilities or signaled any intention to market the services to consumers.

Another Chinese satellite megaconstellation in the works, called Qianfan, appears to be a closer analog to SpaceX’s commercial Starlink service. Qianfan satellites are flat in shape, making them easier to pack onto the tops of rockets before launch. This is a design approach pioneered by SpaceX with Starlink. The backers of the Qianfan network began launching the first of up to 1,300 broadband satellites last year.

Unlike Starlink, the Guowang network consists of satellites manufactured by multiple companies, and they launch on several types of rockets. On its face, the architecture taking shape in low-Earth orbit appears to be more akin to SpaceX’s military-grade Starshield satellites and the Space Development Agency’s future tranches of data relay and missile-tracking satellites.

Guowang, or “national network,” may also bear similarities to something the US military calls MILNET. Proposed in the Trump administration’s budget request for next year, MILNET will be a partnership between the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). One of the design alternatives under review at the Pentagon is to use SpaceX’s Starshield satellites to create a “hybrid mesh network” that the military can rely on for a wide range of applications.

Picking up the pace

In recent weeks, China’s pace of launching Guowang satellites has approached that of Starlink. China has launched five groups of Guowang satellites since July 27, while SpaceX has launched six Starlink missions using its Falcon 9 rockets over the same period.

A single Falcon 9 launch can haul up to 28 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit, while China’s rockets have launched between five and 10 Guowang satellites per flight to altitudes three to four times higher. China has now placed 72 Guowang satellites into orbit since launches began last December, a small fraction of the 12,992-satellite fleet China has outlined in filings with the International Telecommunication Union.

The constellation described in China’s ITU filings will include one group of Guowang satellites between 500 and 600 kilometers (311 and 373 miles), around the same altitude of Starlink. Another shell of Guowang satellites will fly roughly 1,145 kilometers (711 miles) above the Earth. So far, all of the Guowang satellites China has launched since last year appear to be heading for the higher shell.

This higher altitude limits the number of Guowang satellites China’s stable of launch vehicles can carry. On the other hand, fewer satellites are required for global coverage from the higher orbit.

A prototype Guowang satellite is seen prepared for encapsulation inside the nose cone of a Long March 12 rocket last year. This is one of the only views of a Guowang spacecraft China has publicly released. Credit: Hainan International Commercial Aerospace Launch Company Ltd.

SpaceX has already launched nearly 200 of its own Starshield satellites for the NRO to use for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. The next step, whether it’s the SDA constellation, MILNET, or something else, will seek to incorporate hundreds or thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites into real-time combat operations—things like tracking moving targets on the ground and in the air, targeting enemy vehicles, and relaying commands between allied forces. The Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense shield aims to extend real-time targeting to objects in the space domain.

In military jargon, the interconnected links to detect, track, target, and strike a target is called a kill chain or kill web. This is what US Space Force officials are pushing to develop with the Space Development Agency, MILNET, and other future space-based networks.

So where is the US military in building out this kill chain? The military has long had the ability to detect and track an adversary’s activities from space. Spy satellites have orbited the Earth since the dawn of the Space Age.

Much of the rest of the kill chain—like targeting and striking—remains forward work for the Defense Department. Many of the Pentagon’s existing capabilities are classified, but simply put, the multibillion-dollar satellite constellations the Space Force is building just for these purposes still haven’t made it to the launch pad. In some cases, they haven’t made it out of the lab.

Is space really the place?

The Space Development Agency is supposed to begin launching its first generation of more than 150 satellites later this year. These will put the Pentagon in a position to detect smaller, fainter ballistic and hypersonic missiles and provide targeting data for allied interceptors on the ground or at sea.

Space Force officials envision a network of satellites that can essentially control a terrestrial battlefield from orbit. The way future-minded commanders tell it, a fleet of thousands of satellites fitted with exquisite sensors and machine learning will first detect a moving target, whether it’s a land vehicle, aircraft, naval ship, or missile. Then, that spacecraft will transmit targeting data via a laser link to another satellite that can relay the information to a shooter on Earth.

US officials believe Guowang is a step toward integrating satellites into China’s own kill web. It might be easier for them to dismiss Guowang if it were simply a Chinese version of Starlink, but open-source information suggests it’s something more. Perhaps Guowang is more akin to megaconstellations being developed and deployed for the US Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.

If this is the case, China could have a head start on completing all the links for a celestial kill chain. The NRO’s Starshield satellites in space today are presumably focused on collecting intelligence. The Space Force’s megaconstellation of missile tracking, data relay, and command and control satellites is not yet in orbit.

Chinese media reports suggest the Guowang satellites could accommodate a range of instrumentation, including broadband communications payloads, laser communications terminals, synthetic aperture radars, and optical remote sensing payloads. This sounds a lot like a mix of SpaceX and the NRO’s Starshield fleet, the Space Development Agency’s future constellation, and the proposed MILNET program.

A Long March 5B rocket lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China’s Hainan Province on August 13, 2025, with a group of Guowang satellites. (Photo by Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images.) Credit: Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

In testimony before a Senate committee in June, the top general in the US Space Force said it is “worrisome” that China is moving in this direction. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Chief of Space Operations, used China’s emergence as an argument for developing space weapons, euphemistically called “counter-space capabilities.”

“The space-enabled targeting that they’ve been able to achieve from space has increased the range and accuracy of their weapon systems to the point where getting anywhere close enough [to China] in the Western Pacific to be able to achieve military objectives is in jeopardy if we can’t deny, disrupt, degrade that… capability,” Saltzman said. “That’s the most pressing challenge, and that means the Space Force needs the space control counter-space capabilities in order to deny that kill web.”

The US military’s push to migrate many wartime responsibilities to space is not without controversy. The Trump administration wants to cancel purchases of new E-7 jets designed to serve as nerve centers in the sky, where Air Force operators receive signals about what’s happening in the air, on the ground, and in the water for hundreds of miles around. Instead, much of this responsibility would be transferred to satellites.

Some retired military officials, along with some lawmakers, argue against canceling the E-7. They say there’s too little confidence in when satellites will be ready to take over. If the Air Force goes ahead with the plan to cancel the E-7, the service intends to bridge the gap by extending the life of a fleet of Cold War-era E-3 Sentry airplanes, commonly known as AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System).

But the high ground of space offers notable benefits. First, a proliferated network of satellites has global reach, and airplanes don’t. Second, satellites could do the job on their own, with some help from artificial intelligence and edge computing. This would remove humans from the line of fire. And finally, using a large number of satellites is inherently beneficial because it means an attack on one or several satellites won’t degrade US military capabilities.

In China, it takes a village

Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, commander of US Space Forces in the Indo-Pacific region, told Ars last year that US officials are watching to see how China integrates satellite networks like Guowang into military exercises.

“What I find interesting is China continues to copy the US playbook,” Mastalir said. “So as as you look at the success that the United States has had with proliferated architectures, immediately now we see China building their own proliferated architecture, not just the transport layer and the comm layer, but the sensor layer as well. You look at their their pursuit of reusability in terms of increasing their launch capacity, which is currently probably one of their shortfalls. They have plans for a quicker launch tempo.”

A Long March 6A carries a group of Guowang satellites into orbit on July 27, 2025, from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi Province. China has used four different rocket configurations to place five groups of Guowang satellites into orbit in the last month. Credit: Wang Yapeng/Xinhua via Getty Images

China hasn’t recovered or reused an orbital-class booster yet, but several Chinese companies are working on it. SpaceX, meanwhile, continues to recycle its fleet of Falcon 9 boosters while simultaneously developing a massive super-heavy-lift rocket and churning out dozens of Starlink and Starshield satellites every week.

China doesn’t have its own version of SpaceX. In China, it’s taken numerous commercial and government-backed enterprises to reach a launch cadence that, so far this year, is a little less than half that of SpaceX. But the flurry of Guowang launches in the last few weeks shows that China’s satellite and rocket factories are picking up the pace.

Mastalir said China’s actions in the South China Sea, where it has taken claim of disputed islands near Taiwan and the Philippines, could extend farther from Chinese shores with the help of space-based military capabilities.

“Their specific goals are to be able to track and target US high-value assets at the time and place of their choosing,” he said. “That has started with an A2AD, an Anti-Access Area Denial strategy, which is extended to the first island chain and now the second island chain, and eventually all the way to the west coast of California.”

“The sensor capabilities that they’ll need are multi-orbital and diverse in terms of having sensors at GEO (geosynchronous orbit) and now increasingly massive megaconstellations at LEO (low-Earth orbit),” Mastalir said. “So we’re seeing all signs point to being able to target US aircraft carriers… high-value assets in the air like tankers, AWACs. This is a strategy to keep the US from intervening, and that’s what their space architecture is designed to do.”

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink

Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, Policy, spacex, starlink / DJ Henderson / August 20, 2025

Starlink operator SpaceX is continuing its fight against state plans to expand fiber broadband availability. After saying the Trump administration should deny a Virginia proposal, SpaceX is taking the same approach in a fight against Louisiana.

SpaceX made its view known to the Louisiana Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity in a filing, which was reported yesterday by PCMag. SpaceX complained that Louisiana proposed awarding 91.5 percent of funds to fiber Internet service providers instead of to the Starlink satellite system. SpaceX alleged that Louisiana was influenced by “a legion of fiber lobbyists and other hangers-on seeking to personally benefit from massive taxpayer spending.”

The Trump administration rewrote rules for the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program in a way that benefits Starlink. Instead of prioritizing fiber networks that offer better service and are more future-proof, the Trump administration ordered states to revise their plans with a “tech-neutral approach” and lower the average cost of serving each location.

SpaceX’s letters to Virginia and Louisiana claim the states are violating the new rules with their funding proposals.

“The State of Louisiana’s Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program Final Proposal proposes to spend nearly $500 million dollars [sic] to provide connectivity to its unserved and underserved locations,” SpaceX wrote. “SpaceX applied to serve virtually all BEAD households for less than $100 million dollars. As such, Louisiana’s proposal includes over $400 million dollars in wasteful and unnecessary taxpayer spending.”

SpaceX unhappy with $7.75 million

Instead of selecting Starlink for all locations, Louisiana allocated the company $7.75 million to serve 10,327 locations. The plan would spend $499 million for 127,842 locations overall. The Louisiana Local Fiber Consortium, which includes two Louisiana providers that partnered with T-Mobile, was the biggest winner, with $378 million for 68,535 locations.

“Louisiana’s results demonstrate that it did not observe statutory requirements or program rules and did not conduct a competitive process,” SpaceX alleged. “A process in which Louisiana is required to award grants based on the lowest cost to the program, and awards 91.5% of funds to fiber projects at an average per-location cost of $4,449, while rejecting applications at $750 per location because the bid was based on Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) technology could not possibly be considered compliant, technology neutral or a ‘competition.'”

SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink Read More »

Starlink tries to block Virginia’s plan to bring fiber Internet to residents

Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program, Policy, spacex, starlink / Mike M. / August 15, 2025

Noting that its “project areas span from mountains and hills to farmland and coastal plains,” the DHCD said its previous experience with grant-funded deployments “revealed that tree canopy, rugged terrain, and slope can complicate installation and/or obstruct line-of-sight.” State officials said that wireless and low-Earth orbit satellite technology “can have signal degradation, increased latency, and reduced reliability” when there isn’t a clear line of sight.

The DHCD said it included these factors in its evaluation of priority broadband projects. State officials were also apparently concerned about the network capacity of satellite services and the possibility that using state funding to guarantee satellite service in one location could reduce availability of that same service in other locations.

“To review a technology’s ability to scale, the Office considered the currently served speeds of 100/20 Mbps, an application’s stated network capacity, the project area’s number of [locations], the project area’s geographic area, current customer base (if applicable), and future demand,” the department said. “For example, the existing customer base should not be negatively impacted by the award of BEAD locations for a given technology to be considered scalable.”

SpaceX: “Playing field was anything but level”

SpaceX said Virginia is wrong to determine that Starlink “did not qualify as ‘Priority Broadband,'” since the company “provided information demonstrating these capabilities in its application, and it appears that Virginia used this definition only as a pretext to reach a pre-ordained outcome.” SpaceX said that 95 percent of funded “locations in Virginia have an active Starlink subscriber within 1 mile, showing that Starlink already serves every type of environment in Virginia’s BEAD program today” and that 15 percent of funded locations have an active Starlink subscriber within 100 meters.

“The playing field was anything but level and technology neutral, as required by the [updated program rules], and was instead insurmountably stacked against low-Earth orbit satellite operators like SpaceX,” the company said.

We contacted the Virginia DHCD about SpaceX’s comments today and will update this article if the department provides a response.

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Starlink kept me connected to the Internet without fail—until Thursday

broadband, Space, spacex, starlink, Ukraine / Beth Washington / July 26, 2025

A rare global interruption in the Starlink satellite Internet network knocked subscribers offline for more than two hours on Thursday, the longest widespread outage since SpaceX opened the service to consumers nearly five years ago.

The outage affected civilian and military users, creating an inconvenience for many but cutting off a critical lifeline for those who rely on Starlink for military operations, health care, and other applications.

Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink engineering, wrote on X that the network outage lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

“The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” Nicolls wrote. “We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network, and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again.”

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, apologized for the interruption in service on X: “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Effects big and small

The Ukrainian military has been at the leading edge of adopting Starlink services and adapting the system for use in war zones. Ukraine’s exploitation of Starlink connectivity has been instrumental in directing military operations, supporting battlefield communications, and controlling drones engaged in reconnaissance and offensive strikes.

The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, Robert Brovdi, confirmed Thursday’s Starlink outage reached his country’s ongoing war with Russia.

“Starlink went down across the entire front,” Brovdi wrote on Telegram. “Combat operations were carried out without broadcasts; reconnaissance was carried out … using shock weapons.”

Brovdi added that the interruption in service illustrates the importance of having multiple paths of connectivity, especially for time-critical military operations. “This incident, which lasted 150 minutes in the war, points to bottlenecks,” he wrote, urging the military to diversify its means of communication and connectivity.

Oleksandr Dmitriev, the founder of a Ukrainian system that centralizes feeds from thousands of drone crews across the frontline, told Reuters the outage was an example of the shortcomings of relying on cloud services for military operations, particularly battlefield drone reconnaissance.

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Pentagon may put SpaceX at the center of a sensor-to-shooter targeting network

milnet, Science, Space, space development agency, space force, spacex, starlink, starshield / Mike M. / July 2, 2025

Under this plan, SpaceX’s satellites would play a big role in the Space Force’s kill chain.

The Trump administration plans to cancel a fleet of orbiting data relay satellites managed by the Space Development Agency and replace it with a secretive network that, so far, relies primarily on SpaceX’s Starlink Internet constellation, according to budget documents.

The move prompted questions from lawmakers during a Senate hearing on the Space Force’s budget last week. While details of the Pentagon’s plan remain secret, the White House proposal would commit $277 million in funding to kick off a new program called “pLEO SATCOM” or “MILNET.”

The funding line for a proliferated low-Earth orbit satellite communications network hasn’t appeared in a Pentagon budget before, but plans for MILNET already exist in a different form. Meanwhile, the budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 would eliminate funding for a new tranche of data relay satellites from the Space Development Agency. The pLEO SATCOM or MILNET program would replace them, providing crucial support for the Trump administration’s proposed Golden Dome missile defense shield.

“We have to look at what are the other avenues to deliver potentially a commercial proliferated low-Earth orbit constellation,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, told senators last week. “So, we are simply looking at alternatives as we look to the future as to what’s the best way to scale this up to the larger requirements for data transport.”

What will these satellites do?

For six years, the Space Development Agency’s core mission has been to provide the military with a more resilient, more capable network of missile tracking and data relay platforms in low-Earth orbit. Those would augment the Pentagon’s legacy fleet of large, billion-dollar missile warning satellites that are parked more than 20,000 miles away in geostationary orbit.

These satellites detect the heat plumes from missile launches—and also large explosions and wildfires—to provide an early warning of an attack. The US Space Force’s early warning satellites were critical in allowing interceptors to take out Iranian ballistic missiles launched toward Israel last month.

Experts say there are good reasons for the SDA’s efforts. One motivation was the realization over the last decade or so that a handful of expensive spacecraft make attractive targets for an anti-satellite attack. It’s harder for a potential military adversary to go after a fleet of hundreds of smaller satellites. And if they do take out a few of these lower-cost satellites, it’s easier to replace them with little impact on US military operations.

Missile-tracking satellites in low-Earth orbit, flying at altitudes of just a few hundred miles, are also closer to the objects they are designed to track, meaning their infrared sensors can detect and locate dimmer heat signatures from smaller projectiles, such as hypersonic missiles.

The military’s Space Development Agency is in the process of buying, building, and launching a network of hundreds of missile-tracking and communications satellites. Credit: Northrop Grumman

But tracking the missiles isn’t enough. The data must reach the ground in order to be useful. The SDA’s architecture includes a separate fleet of small communications satellites to relay data from the missile tracking network, and potentially surveillance spacecraft tracking other kinds of moving targets, to military forces on land, at sea, or in the air through a series of inter-satellite laser crosslinks.

The military refers to this data relay component as the transport layer. When it was established in the first Trump administration, the SDA set out to deploy tranches of tracking and data transport satellites. Each new tranche would come online every couple of years, allowing the Pentagon to tap into new technologies as fast as industry develops them.

The SDA launched 27 so-called “Tranche 0” satellites in 2023 to demonstrate the concept’s overall viability. The first batch of more than 150 operational SDA satellites, called Tranche 1, is due to begin launching later this year. The SDA plans to begin deploying more than 250 Tranche 2 satellites in 2027. Another set of satellites, Tranche 3, would have followed a couple of years later. Now, the Pentagon seeks to cancel the Tranche 3 transport layer, while retaining the Tranche 3 tracking layer under the umbrella of the Space Development Agency.

Out of the shadows

While SpaceX’s role isn’t mentioned explicitly in the Pentagon’s budget documents, the MILNET program is already on the books, and SpaceX is the lead contractor. It has been made public in recent months, after years of secrecy, although many details remain unclear. Managed in a partnership between the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), MILNET is designed to use military-grade versions of Starlink Internet satellites to create a “hybrid mesh network” the military can rely on for a wide range of applications.

The military version of the Starlink platform is called Starshield. SpaceX has already launched nearly 200 Starshield satellites for the NRO, which uses them for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.

At an industry conference last month, the Space Force commander in charge of operating the military’s communications satellites revealed new information about MILNET, according to a report by Breaking Defense. The network uses SpaceX-made user terminals with additional encryption to connect with Starshield satellites in orbit.

Col. Jeff Weisler, commander of a Space Force unit called Delta 8, said MILNET will comprise some 480 satellites operated by SpaceX but overseen by a military mission director “who communicates to the contracted workforce to execute operations at the timing and tempo of warfighting.”

The Space Force has separate contracts with SpaceX to use the commercial Starlink service. MILNET’s dedicated constellation of more secure Starshield satellites is separate from Starlink, which now has more 7,000 satellites in space.

“We are completely relooking at how we’re going to operate that constellation of capabilities for the joint force, which is going to be significant because we’ve never had a DoD hybrid mesh network at LEO,” Weisler said last month.

So, the Pentagon already relies on SpaceX’s communication services, not to mention the company’s position as the leading launch provider for Space Force and NRO satellites. With MILNET’s new role as a potential replacement for the Space Development Agency’s data relay network, SpaceX’s satellites would become a cog in combat operations.

Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of Space Operations in the US Space Force, looks on before testifying before a House Defense Subcommittee on May 6, 2025. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The data transport layer, whether it’s SDA’s architecture or a commercial solution like Starshield, will “underpin” the Pentagon’s planned Golden Dome missile defense system, Saltzman said.

But it’s not just missiles. Data relay satellites in low-Earth orbit will also have a part in the Space Force’s initiatives to develop space-based platforms to track moving targets on the ground and in the air. Eventually, all Space Force satellites could have the ability to plug into MILNET to send their data to the ground.

A spokesperson for the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Space Force, told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the pLEO, or MILNET, constellation “will provide global, integrated, and resilient capabilities across the combat power, global mission data transport, and satellite communications mission areas.”

That all adds up to a lot of bits and bytes, and the Space Force’s need for data backhaul is only going to increase, according to Col. Robert Davis, head of the Space Sensing Directorate at Space Systems Command.

He said the SDA’s satellites will use onboard edge processing to create two-dimensional missile track solutions. Eventually, the SDA’s satellites will be capable of 3D data fusion with enough fidelity to generate a full targeting solution that could be transmitted directly to a weapons system for it to take action without needing any additional data processing on the ground.

“I think the compute [capability] is there,” Davis said Tuesday at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute, an aerospace-focused think tank in Washington, DC. “Now, it’s a comm[unication] problem and some other technical integration challenges. But how do I do that 3D fusion on orbit? If I do 3D fusion on orbit, what does that allow me to do? How do I get low-latency comms to the shooter or to a weapon itself that’s in flight? So you can imagine the possibilities there.”

The possibilities include exploiting automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to sense, target, and strike an enemy vehicle—a truck, tank, airplane, ship, or missile—nearly instantaneously.

“If I’m on the edge doing 3D fusion, I’m less dependent on the ground and I can get around the globe with my mesh network,” Davis said. “There’s inherent resilience in the overall architecture—not just the space architecture, but the overall architecture—if the ground segment or link segment comes under attack.”

Questioning the plan

Military officials haven’t disclosed the cost of MILNET, either in its current form or in the future architecture envisioned by the Trump administration. For context, SDA has awarded fixed-price contracts worth more than $5.6 billion for approximately 340 data relay satellites in Tranches 1 and 2.

That comes out to roughly $16 million per spacecraft, at least an order of magnitude more expensive than a Starlink satellite coming off of SpaceX’s assembly line. Starshield satellites, with their secure communications capability, are presumably somewhat more expensive than an off-the-shelf Starlink.

Some former defense officials and lawmakers are uncomfortable with putting commercially operated satellites in the “kill chain,” the term military officials use for the process of identifying threats, making a targeting decision, and taking military action.

It isn’t clear yet whether SpaceX will operate the MILNET satellites in this new paradigm, but the company has a longstanding preference for doing so. SpaceX built a handful of tech demo satellites for the Space Development Agency a few years ago, but didn’t compete for subsequent SDA contracts. One reason for this, sources told Ars, is that the SDA operates its satellite constellation from government-run control centers.

Instead, the SDA chose L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, Sierra Space, Terran Orbital, and York Space Systems to provide the next batches of missile tracking and data transport satellites. RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, withdrew from a contract after the company determined it couldn’t make money on the program.

The tracking satellites will carry different types of infrared sensors, some with wide fields of view to detect missile launches as they happen, and others with narrow-angle sensors to maintain custody of projectiles in flight. The data relay satellites will employ different frequencies and anti-jam waveforms to supply encrypted data to military forces on the ground.

This frame from a SpaceX video shows a stack of Starlink Internet satellites attached to the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, moments after the launcher’s payload fairing is jettisoned. Credit: SpaceX

The Space Development Agency’s path hasn’t been free of problems. The companies the agency selected to build its spacecraft have faced delays, largely due to supply chain issues, and some government officials have worried the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps aren’t ready to fully capitalize on the information streaming down from the SDA’s satellites.

The SDA hired SAIC, a government services firm, earlier this year with a $55 million deal to act as a program integrator with responsibility to bring together satellites from multiple contractors, keep them on schedule, and ensure they provide useful information once they’re in space.

SpaceX, on the other hand, is a vertically integrated company. It designs, builds, and launches its own Starlink and Starshield satellites. The only major components of SpaceX’s spy constellation for the NRO that the company doesn’t build in-house are the surveillance sensors, which come from Northrop Grumman.

Buying a service from SpaceX might save money and reduce the chances of further delays. But lawmakers argued there’s a risk in relying on a single company for something that could make or break real-time battlefield operations.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, raised concerns that the Space Force is canceling a program with “robust competition and open standards” and replacing it with a network that is “sole-sourced to SpaceX.”

“This is a massive and important contract,” Coons said. “Doesn’t handing this to SpaceX make us dependent on their proprietary technology and avoid the very positive benefits of competition and open architecture?”

Later in the hearing, Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) chimed in with his own warning about the Space Force’s dependence on contractors. Hoeven’s state is home to one of the SDA’s satellite control centers.

“We depend on the Air Force, the Space Force, the Department of Defense, and the other services, and we can’t be dependent on private enterprise when it comes to fighting a war, right? Would you agree with that?” Hoeven asked Saltzman.

“Absolutely, we can’t be dependent on it,” Saltzman replied.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said military officials haven’t settled on a procurement strategy. He didn’t mention SpaceX by name.

As we go forward, MILNET, the term, should not be taken as just a system,” Meink said. “How we field that going forward into the future is something that’s still under consideration, and we will look at the acquisition of that.”

An Air Force spokesperson confirmed the requirements and architecture for MILNET are still in development, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. The spokesperson added that the department is “investigating” how to scale MILNET into a “multi-vendor satellite communication architecture that avoids vendor lock.”

This doesn’t sound all that different than the SDA’s existing technical approach for data relay, but it shifts more responsibility to commercial companies. While there’s still a lot we don’t know, contractors with existing mega-constellations would appear to have an advantage in winning big bucks under the Pentagon’s new plan.

There are other commercial low-Earth orbit constellations coming online, such as Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband network, that could play a part in MILNET. However, if the Space Force is looking for a turnkey commercial solution, Starlink and Starshield are the only options available today, putting SpaceX in a strong position for a massive windfall.

Pentagon may put SpaceX at the center of a sensor-to-shooter targeting network Read More »

A Chinese-born crypto tycoon—of all people—changed the way I think of space

crew dragon, fram2, human spaceflight, Space, spacex, starlink / Mike M. / April 22, 2025

“Are we the first generation of digital nomad in space?”

Chun Wang orbits the Earth inside the cupola of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Credit: Chun Wang via X

For a quarter-century, dating back to my time as a budding space enthusiast, I’ve watched with a keen eye each time people have ventured into space.

That’s 162 human spaceflight missions since the beginning of 2000, ranging from Space Shuttle flights to Russian Soyuz missions, Chinese astronauts’ first forays into orbit, and commercial expeditions on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Yes, I’m also counting privately funded suborbital hops launched by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

Last week, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin captured headlines—though not purely positive—with the launch of six women, including pop star Katy Perry, to an altitude of 66 miles (106 kilometers). The capsule returned to the ground 10 minutes and 21 seconds later. It was the first all-female flight to space since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo mission in 1963.

Many commentators criticized the flight as a tone-deaf stunt or a rich person’s flex. I won’t make any judgments, except to say two of the passengers aboard Blue Origin’s capsule—Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen—have compelling stories worth telling.

Immerse yourself

Here’s another story worth sharing. Earlier this month, an international crew of four private astronauts took their own journey into space aboard a Dragon spacecraft owned and operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Like Blue Origin’s all-female flight, this mission was largely bankrolled by a billionaire.

Actually, it was a couple of billionaires. Musk used his fortune to fund a large portion of the Dragon spacecraft’s development costs alongside a multibillion-dollar contribution from US taxpayers. Chun Wang, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency billionaire, paid SpaceX an undisclosed sum to fly one of SpaceX’s ships into orbit with three of his friends.

So far, this seems like another story about a rich guy going to space. This is indeed a major part of the story, but there’s more to it. Chun, now a citizen of Malta, named the mission Fram2 after the Norwegian exploration ship Fram used for polar expeditions at the turn of the 20th century. Following in the footsteps of Fram, which means “forward” in Norwegian, Chun asked SpaceX if he could launch into an orbit over Earth’s poles to gain a perspective on our planet no human eyes had seen before.

Joining Chun on the three-and-a-half-day Fram2 mission were Jannicke Mikkelsen, a Norwegian filmmaker and cinematographer who took the role of vehicle commander. Rabea Rogge, a robotics researcher from Germany, took the pilot’s seat and assisted Mikkelsen in monitoring the spacecraft’s condition in flight. Wang and Eric Philips, an Australian polar explorer and guide, flew as “mission specialists” on the mission.

Chun’s X account reads like a travelogue, with details of each jet-setting jaunt around the world. His propensity for sharing travel experiences extended into space, and I’m grateful for it.

The Florida peninsula, including Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, through the lens of Chun’s iPhone. Credit: Chun Wang via X

Usually, astronauts might share their reflections from space by writing posts on social media, or occasionally sharing pictures and video vignettes from the International Space Station (ISS). This, in itself, is a remarkable change from the way astronauts communicated with the public from space just 15 years ago.

Most of these social media posts involve astronauts showcasing an experiment they’re working on or executing a high-flying tutorial in physics. Often, these videos include acrobatic backflips or show the novelty of eating and drinking in microgravity. Some astronauts, like Don Pettit, who recently came home from the ISS, have a knack for gorgeous orbital photography.

Chun’s videos offer something different. They provide an unfiltered look into how four people live inside a spacecraft with an internal volume comparable to an SUV, and the awe of seeing something beautiful for the first time. His shares have an intimacy, authenticity, and most importantly, an immediacy I’ve never seen before in a video from space.

One of the videos Chun recorded and posted to X shows the Fram2 crew members inside Dragon the day after their launch. The astronauts seem to be enjoying themselves. Their LunchBot meal kits float nearby, and the capsule’s makeshift trash bin contains Huggies baby wipes and empty water bottles, giving the environment a vibe akin to a camping trip, except for the constant hum of air fans.

Later, Chun shared a video of the crew opening the hatch leading to Dragon’s cupola window, a plexiglass extension with panoramic views. Mikkelsen and Chun try to make sense of what they’re seeing.

“Oh, Novaya Zemlya, do you see it?” Mikkelsen asks. “Yeah. Yeah. It’s right here,” Chun replies. “Oh, damn. Oh, it is,” Mikkelsen says.

Chun then drops a bit of Cold War trivia. “The largest atomic bomb was tested here,” he says. “And all this ice. Further north, the Arctic Ocean. The North Pole.”

Flight Day 3 pic.twitter.com/vLlbAKIOvl

— Chun (@satofishi) April 3, 2025

On the third day of the mission, the Dragon spacecraft soared over Florida, heading south to north on its pole-to-pole loop around the Earth. “I can see our launch pad from here,” Mikkelsen says, pointing out NASA’s Kennedy Space Center several hundred miles away.

Flying over our launch site. pic.twitter.com/eHatUsOJ20

— Chun (@satofishi) April 3, 2025

Finally, Chun capped his voyage into space with a 30-second clip from his seat inside Dragon as the spacecraft fires thrusters for a deorbit burn. The capsule’s small rocket jets pulsed repeatedly to slow Dragon’s velocity enough to drop out of orbit and head for reentry and splashdown off the coast of California.

Lasers in LEO

It wasn’t only Chun’s proclivity for posting to social media that made this possible. It was also SpaceX’s own Starlink Internet network, which the Dragon spacecraft connected to with a “Plug and Plaser” terminal mounted in the capsule’s trunk. This device allowed Dragon and its crew to transmit and receive Internet signals through a laser link with Starlink satellites orbiting nearby.

Astronauts have shared videos similar to those from Fram2 in the past, but almost always after they are back on Earth, and often edited and packaged into a longer video. What’s unique about Chun’s videos is that he was able to immediately post his clips, some of which are quite long, to social media via the Starlink Internet network.

“With a Starlink laser terminal in the trunk, we can theoretically achieve speeds up to 100 or more gigabits per second,” said Jon Edwards, SpaceX’s vice president for Falcon launch vehicles, before the Fram2 mission’s launch. “For Fram2, we’re expecting around 1 gigabit per second.”

Compare this with the connectivity available to astronauts on the International Space Station, where crews have access to the Internet with uplink speeds of about 4 to 6 megabits per second and 500 kilobits to 1 megabit per second of downlink, according to Sandra Jones, a NASA spokesperson. The space station communications system provides about 1 megabit per second of additional throughput for email, an Internet telephone, and video conferencing. There’s another layer of capacity for transmitting scientific and telemetry data between the space station and Mission Control.

So, Starlink’s laser connection with the Dragon spacecraft offers roughly 200 to 2,000 times the throughput of the Internet connection available on the ISS. The space station sends and receives communication signals, including the Internet, through NASA’s fleet of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites.

The laser link is also cheaper to use. NASA’s TDRS relay stations are dedicated to providing communication support for the ISS and numerous other science missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope, while Dragon plugs into the commercial Starlink network serving millions of other users.

SpaceX tested the Plug and Plaser device for the first time in space last year on the Polaris Dawn mission, which was most notable for the first fully commercial spacewalk in history. The results of the test were “phenomenal,” said Kevin Coggins, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and Navigation.

“They have pushed a lot of data through in these tests to demonstrate their ability to do data rates just as high as TDRS, if not higher,” Coggins said in a recent presentation to a committee of the National Academies.

Artist’s illustration of a laser optical link between a Dragon spacecraft and a Starlink satellite. Credit: SpaceX

Edwards said SpaceX wants to make the laser communication capability available for future Dragon missions and commercial space stations that may replace the ISS. Meanwhile, NASA is phasing out the government-owned TDRS network. Coggins said NASA’s relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit will remain active through the remaining life of the International Space Station, and then will be retired.

“Many of these spacecraft are far beyond their intended service life,” Coggins said. “In fact, we’ve retired one recently. We’re getting ready to retire another one. In this period of time, we’re going to retire TDRSs pretty often, and we’re going to get down to just a couple left that will last us into the 2030s.

“We have to preserve capacity as the constellation gets smaller, and we have to manage risks,” Coggins said. “So, we made a decision on November 8, 2024, that no new users could come to TDRS. We took it out of the service catalog.”

NASA’s future satellites in Earth orbit will send their data to the ground through a commercial network like Starlink. The agency has agreements worth more than $278 million with five companies—SpaceX, Amazon, Viasat, SES, and Telesat—to demonstrate how they can replace and improve on the services currently provided by TDRS (pronounced “tee-dress”).

These companies are already operating or will soon deploy satellites that could provide radio or laser optical communication links with future space stations, science probes, and climate and weather monitoring satellites. “We’re not paying anyone to put up a constellation,” Coggins said.

After these five companies complete their demonstration phase, NASA will become a subscriber to some or all of their networks.

“Now, instead of a 30-year-old [TDRS] constellation and trying to replenish something that we had before, we’ve got all these new capabilities, all these new things that weren’t possible before, especially optical,” Coggins said. “That’s going to that’s going to mean so much with the volume and quality of data that you’re going to be able to bring down.”

Digital nomads

Chun and his crewmates didn’t use the Starlink connection to send down any prize-winning discoveries about the Universe, or data for a comprehensive global mapping survey. Instead, the Fram2 crew used the connection for video calls and text messages with their families through tablets and smartphones linked to a Wi-Fi router inside the Dragon spacecraft.

“Are we the first generation of digital nomad in space?” Chun asked his followers in one X post.

“It was not 100 percent available, but when it was, it was really fast,” Chun wrote of the Internet connection in an email to Ars. He told us he used an iPhone 16 Pro Max for his 4K videos. From some 200 miles (300 kilometers) up, the phone’s 48-megapixel camera, with a simulated optical zoom, brought out the finer textures of ice sheets, clouds, water, and land formations.

While the flight was fully automated, SpaceX trained the Fram2 crew how to live and work inside the Dragon spacecraft and take over manual control if necessary. None of Fram2 crew members had a background in spaceflight or in any part of the space industry before they started preparing for their mission. Notably, it was the first human spaceflight mission to low-Earth orbit without a trained airplane pilot onboard.

Chun Wang, far right, extends his arm to take an iPhone selfie moments after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Credit: SpaceX

Their nearly four days in orbit was largely a sightseeing expedition. Alongside Chun, Mikkelsen put her filmmaking expertise to use by shooting video from Dragon’s cupola. Before the flight, Mikkelsen said she wanted to create an immersive 3D account of her time in space. In some of Wang’s videos, Mikkelsen is seen working with a V-RAPTOR 8K VV camera from Red Digital Cinema, a device that sells for approximately $25,000, according to the manufacturer’s website.

The crew spent some of their time performing experiments, including the first X-ray of a human in space. Scientists gathered some useful data on the effects of radiation on humans in space because Fram2 flew in a polar orbit, where the astronauts were exposed to higher doses of ionizing radiation than a person might see on the International Space Station.

After they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the mission, the Fram2 astronauts disembarked from the Dragon capsule without the assistance of SpaceX ground teams, which typically offer a helping hand for balance as crews readjust to gravity. This demonstrated how people might exit their spaceships on the Moon or Mars, where no one will be there to greet them.

Going into the flight, Chun wanted to see Antarctica and Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago where he lives north of the Arctic Circle. In more than 400 human spaceflight missions from 1961 until this year, nobody ever flew in an orbit directly over the poles. Sophisticated satellites routinely fly over the polar regions to take high-resolution imagery and measure things like sea ice.

The Fram2 astronauts’ observations of the Arctic and Antarctic may not match what satellites can see, but their experience has some lasting catchet, standing alone among all who have flown to space before.

“People often refer to Earth as a blue marble planet, but from our point of view, it’s more of a frozen planet,” Chun told Ars.

A Chinese-born crypto tycoon—of all people—changed the way I think of space Read More »

Here’s how a satellite ended up as a ghostly apparition on Google Earth

airbus, Earth, france, Google, google maps, pleiades, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / DJ Henderson / April 16, 2025

Regardless of the identity of the satellite, this image is remarkable for several reasons.

First, despite so many satellites flying in space, it’s still rare to see a real picture—not just an artist’s illustration—of what one actually looks like in orbit. For example, SpaceX has released photos of Starlink satellites in launch configuration, where dozens of the spacecraft are stacked together to fit inside the payload compartment of the Falcon 9 rocket. But there are fewer well-resolved views of a satellite in its operational environment, with solar arrays extended like the wings of a bird.

This is changing as commercial companies place more and more imaging satellites in orbit. Several companies provide “non-Earth imaging” services by repurposing Earth observation cameras to view other objects in space. These views can reveal information that can be useful in military or corporate espionage.

Secondly, the Google Earth capture offers a tangible depiction of a satellite’s speed. An object in low-Earth orbit must travel at more than 17,000 mph (more than 27,000 km per hour) to keep from falling back into the atmosphere.

While the B-2’s motion caused it to appear a little smeared in the Google Earth image a few years ago, the satellite’s velocity created a different artifact. The satellite appears five times in different colors, which tells us something about how the image was made. Airbus’ Pleiades satellites take pictures in multiple spectral bands: blue, green, red, panchromatic, and near-infrared.

At lower left, the black outline of the satellite is the near-infrared capture. Moving up, you can see the satellite in red, blue, and green, followed by the panchromatic, or black-and-white, snapshot with the sharpest resolution. Typically, the Pleiades satellites record these images a split-second apart and combine the colors to generate an accurate representation of what the human eye might see. But this doesn’t work so well for a target moving at nearly 5 miles per second.

Here’s how a satellite ended up as a ghostly apparition on Google Earth Read More »