Two Experimental Starlink Satellites were Lofted into Orbit. If proven successful, Starlink's batches of satellites, should start launching next year.

SpaceX launches broadband pathfinders

SpaceX launched again on Thursday - this time to put a Spanish radar satellite above the Earth. But there was a lot of interest also in the mission's secondary payloads - a couple of spacecraft the Californian rocket company will use to trial the delivery of broadband from orbit.

 From article, (Wednesday's Falcon-9 took up the Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b testbeds (CEO Elon Musk dubbed them Tintin A & B in a tweet).

The pair are identical - with a bus, or chassis, being slightly less than 1 cu metre, and having two 8m-long solar wings; and weighing roughly 400kg.

The Microsats are intended to prove all the different design elements, such as the antenna that will relay the data traffic.

If all proceeds as it should, SpaceX will aim to start deploying Starlink's satellites in batches over the next few years.

The Falcon Heavy, with its enormous lifting capacity, could help accelerate the roll-out.

These spacecraft would be positioned at altitudes ranging from 1,110km to 1,325km, and transmit in the Ku and Ka portions of the radio spectrum.

The company would like also to put up an additional 7,500 satellites that would sit under the initial set and transmit in the V-band.

SpaceX does not talk much about its broadband plans, but that is true of all the companies that have similar proposals.In 2016, it filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission in the US for a licence to operate a "mesh network" in the sky consisting of 4,425 satellites arranged in 83 orbital planes.

Some of these firms have already launched pathfinders. Telesat of Canada, for example, launched its Phase 1 LEO satellite in January. This is a prototype for more than 100 follow-on platforms.

Perhaps the most advanced mega-constellation in this field is OneWeb, which will be launching 10 satellites later this year for a network that will eventually comprise at least 600, but which could eventually encompass more than 2,000 spacecraft.

OneWeb is backed by heavyweights in the space industry, such Airbus, Qualcomm, Intelsat, Hughes, and MDA.)

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