In 2018, the Federal Communications Commission of the United States gave the green light to the SpaceX project, known as Starlink, and allowed it to put more than 4,000 satellites into orbit that were to provide broadband internet to the entire world.
The purpose of the satellites starlink it was to be connected in a network and maintain the same frequency and height, providing internet at a speed of one Gbps with a maximum latency of 25 milliseconds. They have achieved that, in almost all places where they have coverage.
The goal of Starlink, owned by Elon Musk like many other companies (SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, etc.) is to put 30,000 satellites into orbit by the end of the decade. These are many if we take into account that right now they already have 3,700 orbiting.
Yeah, Elon Musk wants multiply that number by 10 and become the largest satellite internet provider in the world. This would give him great power and influence in international communications. As already seen with the conflict in Ukraine.
This is how the constellation of satellites works
The tweeter Pedro Baños has published a very curious document on Twitter in which we can see the complete Starlink constellation in operation, something that is worth seeing only taking into account the thousands of satellites that are working in orbit.
The expert comments in the tweet that it is possible to differentiate very well the satellites that are operational, those that are going up to orbit and those that are returning to Earth (for various reasons). If we look closely, it is possible to observe how these go in order, tracing a very marked and orderly path.
We can even check how a few satellites cross the North Pole giving coverage to scientific stations and small towns. In Spain the service works quite well and already offers up to 500 Mbps in rural areas where there is no terrestrial coverage.
Starlink has proven to be a success, although NASA and the rest of the space agencies are not very happy with which they begin to take over the entire low earth orbit, because of the garbage they generate and because of how dangerous it is for launches and the International Space Station itself.