One of Elon Musk's new projects, called "Starlink", is aiming to send over 40,000 small satellites into orbit in order for there to be high-speed reception anywhere on the planet. As of today, there are 835 satellites in orbit, so the process needs to speed off if Musk wants to reach his goal of providing global coverage by the end of 2021. The satellites work by orbiting a lot lower than normal satellites so that the signal could be faster. Another benefit of orbiting lower is that it lets the satellites burn up in the atmosphere is it malfunctions and stops working. This prevents debris from flying out into space or falling back onto Earth. If the satellite does not malfunction though, it will land on its own by the time that the battery life of the satellite ends. The reason that the satellites are able to be so small is because of how dense they are. They fit a lot of technology into a small space, making it small enough to be launched into space by the Falcon 9, a rocket created by Musk and SpaceX. Starlink is the first spacecraft to use krypton in order to propel itself which is pretty cool because it makes use of this gas in a way that it was never used before. Another cool feature of Starlink is that it uses technology from the Department of Defense to track debris and make sure that they don't run into debris. So, a lot of ingenuity and thought had to go into making this project, which will benefit people from all over the world for years to come, just like Elon Musk's other projects. Do you think you will get a new data plan using Starlink once it becomes available?
https://www.starlink.com/
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