Facebook CEO and lizard overlord Mark Zuckerburg decided on deploying a web of internet-beaming satellites in space way back in 2014. In the meantime, SpaceX has successfully sent almost 300 satellites up for its Starlink service. So… who’s winning the race?
Beaming internet from space isn’t a new idea, the problem has always been execution. ‘Cos you know, sending things into space is an absolute mission. It takes up a lot of fuel and resources, so not everyone has that luxury. Except if you own and run a successful space agency.
Dreaming of the skies
Starlink, a branch company from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, will send another 60 satellites into low-orbit come this Saturday (15 Feb 2020), which will contribute to a total of about 300 satellites. The plan is to get about 12,000 satellites up there (low-earth orbit at about 550km from the earth), which will create a low-latency network that’ll allow for faster wireless internet anywhere on earth. This is what Zuckerburg plans to do with the Facebook project as well.
In 2016, a Facebook satellite literally exploded on the launch pad after the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that was supposed to carry it suffered a fatal “anomaly”. Now if that’s not some form of karma for the Cambridge Analytica debacle, we don’t know what is.
It looks like Facebook may send up its first of the supposed ‘constellation’ satellite up next month with the as a test on the Arianespace Vega rocket in France. This is according to a report published by Business Insider.
We’re not quite sure what Facebook plans to do with one satellite and how long it’ll take for them to get more up there. But it has some harsh competition from Starlink and even Amazon and OneWeb.
