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SpaceX will launch 14 Falcon 9 rockets starting in 2026 to deploy satellites for Telesat’s Lightspeed community, a constellation designed to offer broadband connectivity for companies, governments, and telecom operators, officers introduced Monday.
Telesat, a Canadian firm that has been in enterprise since 1969, has lengthy been an operator of enormous communications satellites in geostationary orbit. But in 2016, the corporate introduced it will deploy a fleet of low-Earth orbit satellites to beam low-latency, high-speed Internet around the globe. The community, which Telesat calls Lightspeed, has confronted delays and setbacks, ultimately main Telesat to modify satellite tv for pc producers from the European agency Thales Alenia Space to Canada-based MDA earlier this 12 months.
On Monday, Telesat mentioned it has chosen SpaceX to launch the Lightspeed satellites on 14 Falcon 9 rockets from launch websites in Florida and California. Each Falcon 9 mission will loft as much as 18 Lightspeed satellites on a single launch, in accordance with Telesat. This announcement additionally indicators a change in course for Telesat, which beforehand introduced launch contracts with Blue Origin and Relativity Space.
The 14 missions seem like greater than sufficient to launch Telesat’s first batch of 198 Lightspeed satellites, and the corporate mentioned the launches will allow international service, which requires 156 spacecraft in orbit, to start in 2027.
Going with the confirmed rocket
In an announcement, Telesat referred to as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 the “most dependable and solely reusable orbital rocket flying right now.” That’s undoubtedly true, with SpaceX’s Falcon rocket household at present sitting at greater than 230 consecutive profitable missions.
Telesat mentioned it is going to reap the benefits of SpaceX’s excessive launch cadence to quickly deploy the Lightspeed satellites, which can fly in a mixture of polar and mid-inclination orbits roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) above Earth. Each Lightspeed satellite tv for pc will weigh about 1,600 kilos (750 kilograms) at launch, across the similar as the present iteration of SpaceX’s personal Starlink Internet satellites.
SpaceX has not shied away from launching satellites for its opponents within the satellite tv for pc broadband market. Just this 12 months, it has launched Internet satellites for OneWeb, Viasat, and EchoStar.
But the Lightspeed community will goal a unique section of the market than SpaceX’s consumer-focused Starlink constellation. Like OneWeb, Lightspeed is aimed toward enterprise clients, reminiscent of cellular telco operators and authorities clients, together with faculties, medical companies, and army forces.
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Amazon’s Project Kuiper community, which can launch its first check satellites later this 12 months, is extra of a direct competitor with Starlink within the shopper Internet market. Amazon chosen each obtainable Western rocket moreover SpaceX’s Falcon 9 to launch greater than 3,000 satellites for its Kuiper program, reserving 77 launches with United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V and Vulcan rockets, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, and Europe’s Ariane 6.