Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched nearly 400 Starlink satellites in May

When Tesla’s Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, he was looking to work toward eventually building a sustainable human settlement on Mars. 

Fast-forward 23 years and no one is living on the rusty red planet, but SpaceX has become the world’s largest internet satellite company, launching another 398 Starlink satellites in a “massive May” for the company.

That’s a record month for SpaceX, coming hot off the heels of a public rocket explosion, and it takes the total deployed to more than 8,800, some 7,600 of which are still actively whizzing around Earth, per data from satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. The SpaceX tally is also roughly 40% of all satellites launched since Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, was fired into orbit all the way back in 1957.

Unlike most communications satellites, which are typically larger, Starlink’s low-orbit satellites zip around Earth at relatively low altitudes — allowing faster transmissions between satellites and terminals.

See the full article here.