After a record-breaking year in 2023, space company SpaceX also started 2024 with a historic launch – this time not because of the launch itself, but because of what was on it.
At 5:44 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the Falcon 9 rocket took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, carrying 21 satellites for its Starlink satellite internet service on its upper stage, but six of them were the first of their kind in the world – satellites with cellular communication capabilities.
Mobile communications satellites are ultra-powerful cellular antennas designed to provide "seamless access to text, voice and data for LTE (4G) devices around the world," according to the company. Such satellites promise to solve two existing cellular network problems: the first is "blind zones," where there are no cellular antennas due to the unfeasibility of installing them in places where not many people live or pass, and the second is to ensure continuous connectivity even in cases of extreme congestion or disasters that affect the ground cellular networks, as happened in southern Israel on October 7, when Hamas terrorists damaged, among other things, electricity and communications infrastructure.
SpaceX was allowed to operate cellular satellites last month by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States, following an initial test of prototype satellites. Even the new satellites are still classified as "experimental," with a 180-day window for testing. The ambitious plan includes operating some 840 such satellites, 60 of which will be deployed over the United States and the rest in the rest of the world.
One of the goals of the experiment is to create a global mobile network where subscribers can use wherever they are without purchasing roaming plans. However, its price is likely to be higher than that of traditional cellular services, just as SpaceX's satellite internet service costs significantly more than cable-based internet services of one type (copper) or another (fiber optic).
And if that wasn't enough, the company recorded another successful launch about half a day later, when it launched a Swedish satellite at 1:04 a.m. local time on Thursday. The satellite was launched at an altitude of 35,000 km – an orbit 64 times higher than that of the Starlink satellites (about 550 km). That's because it's the optimal altitude for satellites designed to maintain a stunted position relative to Earth's rotation – and the Swedish satellite is designed to stay above its home country.
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