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WASHINGTON — SpaceX plans to start testing its Starlink satellite-to-cell service with T-Mobile this yr, an government of Elon Musk’s firm mentioned on Monday.
“We’ll be taught so much by doing — not essentially by overanalyzing — and getting on the market,” Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX vice chairman of Starlink enterprise gross sales, mentioned on a panel on the Satellite tv for pc 2023 convention in Washington, D.C.
The marketplace for space-based information companies directly to devices on the bottom, resembling for smartphones, is broadly thought-about to have profitable potential, with quite a lot of satellite tv for pc corporations partnering with terrestrial cell community operators (MNOs) and machine makers to fill in protection gaps throughout the Earth.
SpaceX and T-Cellular announced their partnership in August, vowing to “finish cell lifeless zones.”
SpaceX has launched about 4,000 Starlink satellites to this point, and recently rolled out its more powerful “V2 Mini” satellites, which it says have quadruple the capability of the earlier era.
Hofeller mentioned Monday that SpaceX is manufacturing six satellites per day at its facility close to Seattle and believes the corporate is now not manufacturing its earlier 1.5 sequence of Starlink satellites. The corporate can be producing “1000’s” of person terminals per day, he mentioned.
Whereas SpaceX plans to make even bigger second-generation satellites, and has “made just a few” to this point, Hofeller emphasised that launching these is “tied very closely to Starship,” the corporate’s towering rocket that has but to achieve house.
SpaceX has “nicely over” 1 million Starlink customers, Hofeller mentioned, having handed that milestone in December. The compay lately introduced that its Starlink business “had a cash flow positive quarter” in 2022, with the corporate aiming for the unit to “generate income” in 2023.
