After the next launch of Starlink on December 2, more than a third of all satellites in Earth orbit were under the control of Elon Musk's company. This is reported by The Independent.
Reporters noted that after sending the last batch of Starlink satellites, SpaceX has set a personal record for successfully launching rockets in one year. As of December 3, the Musk Corporation has launched 27 rockets. Also, at the moment, the American company controls 37 percent of the total number of active satellites in orbit.
The authors refer to data from the CelesTrak tracker, according to which Starlink owns 1753 satellites out of 4841 in space. It is clarified that 357 satellites are controlled by another project to provide Internet communications through space equipment OneWeb. Most of the satellites – 1910 units – belong to other organizations.
The submission says SpaceX is scheduled to launch five more Starlink batches by the end of the year. The next one should take place on December 9th. According to the company's plans to deploy a global Internet network from space, there should be about 42,000 satellites in orbit.
In early December, SpaceX engineers made the decision to change the orbit of some Starlink satellites. This is necessary in order for the equipment to avoid collision with space debris.
