Elon Musk’s SpaceX keeps launching satellites into Earth’s orbit, and it just achieved a big milestone.
On Sunday, two of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets lifted off from Florida and California hauling 28 Starlink satellites each, adding a total of 56 more satellites to the sky.
This brings the total number of Starlink satellites SpaceX has launched to date to more than 10,000, the company said in a tweet.
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A subsidiary of SpaceX, Starlink is a high-speed internet service served from a network of low orbit satellites. The company launched its first test satellites in 2018, following with its first 60 operational satellites the next year. Since then, the company has continued to steadily increase its Starlink fleet, despite ongoing concerns over the company’s potential contribution to a growing space debris problem.
Starlink is authorized by the FCC to launch a total of 12,000 satellites. The company plans to deploy up to 30,000 additional satellites.
Not all of the company’s satellites are still operational, though. With a typical lifespan of five years, some have been decommissioned, which typically means they’re intuitionally de-orbited to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Roughly 8,600 Starlink satellites are reportedly currently in orbit.
