Musk Launches 54 Satellites — Clarifies They Are for “Peaceful Use” Only
(NewsSpace.com) – Elon Musk’s SpaceX has an ambitious plan to connect the entire globe with one wireless internet system: Starlink. Because the internet system uses small units at lower orbits, the company can fire dozens on a single rocket. On September 16, Musk reassured the world that his system was for “peaceful use.”
Starlink is meant for peaceful use only
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 17, 2022
On September 4, a Falcon 9 rocket left Earth’s atmosphere carrying 54 tiny satellites weighing just under 600 pounds each. The units were bound for their final destinations 300 miles above the ground, a stone’s throw in space terms. The liftoff went off without a hitch, the new hardware found its orbit, and the Falcon’s reusable booster made its way from a safe splashdown in the Atlantic onto a SpaceX vessel.
The reassurance from Musk may have been a response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime’s recent insinuation that NATO countries are plotting major military action against his forces in Ukraine. According to The Epoch Times, officials from the adversarial nation reportedly complained at a UN meeting that “elements of civilian, including commercial, infrastructure in outer space for military purposes.” Starlink has been providing internet service to Ukraine since the beginning of the war. The head of a Russian delegation stated that doing so “constitute[s] indirect involvement in military conflicts.”
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