OREANDA-NEWS. Billionaire Ilon Mask has made an important step in implementing his global project, which will provide Internet for all the inhabitants of the Earth. On the night of May 24, the Falcon-9 launch vehicle was launched from the US Air Force base at Cape Canaveral. It delivered 60 satellites of the Starlink project developed by SpaceX to the orbit of our planet.

The businessman compared the devices with a deck of cards, noting that all of them successfully undocked from the launch vehicle and are now preparing for the deployment of solar cells. “All 60 Starlink mission satellites are online”, wrote Musk.  Each unit has a mass of 227 kg. It includes one high-bandwidth antenna and one solar battery for power. For full autonomy in orbit, each satellite is equipped with its own Hall engine, the working body in which the gas krypton acts. These engines will allow satellites to maintain their orbit, position on it, and most importantly - to go out of orbit themselves at the end of work.

As planned by the billionaire, these spacecraft will help create a global network for the transmission of Internet traffic. In total, it is planned to deliver 11,000 satellites to Earth orbit, each of which is equipped with a special powerful antenna and a solar battery. At the first stage of the Starlink project, 800 vehicles will be sent into space, to which SpaceX plans to spend $ 3.5 billion. According to preliminary estimates, Mask’s implementation of the entire global plan is $ 10 billion, although experts believe that this figure is too low, the Russian media reported.

The launch of the ship was planned for July 2019, but now, apparently, it will have to be postponed for at least several months. Koenigsmann noted that the launch date will depend on how the investigation proceeds.