Elon Musk’s SpaceX is having an amazing season, and evidently things simply continue to improve: On Tuesday, the organization reported that it has gotten as much as 500,000 orders for its satellite internet service, Starlink.
“To date, over half a million people have placed an order or put down a deposit for Starlink,” SpaceX operations engineer Siva Bharadvaj said during a launch event broadcasting its 26th Starlink mission.
Starlink is SpaceX’s planned interconnected internet network, which as of now includes a huge number of active satellites — an array referred to in the space industry as a constellation — that are intended to cooperate to deliver high-speed internet to customers anyplace in the world.
Back in December 2020, Starlink won a gigantic government contract — as much as $885 million — to give high-speed internet to underserved, rural areas of the U.S. The agreement came only two months after SpaceX had started a public beta program for Starlink, estimating internet service at $99 per month on top of a $499 forthright expense that incorporates a client terminal and Wi-Fi router to associate with the satellites.
In its present form, Starlink is as of now the world’s biggest satellite constellation, with in excess of 1,500 Starlink satellites as of now in orbit.
Regardless of the declaration of over half a million orders effectively in play, those numbers are liable to change; as of now, those orders are still “completely refundable.” In a Tuesday tweet, Musk himself recognized that the preliminary sales numbers were additionally restricted by “high density of users in urban areas.”
“Most likely, all of the initial 500k will receive service,” he wrote. “More of a challenge when we get into the several million user range.”
