Musk’s satellites beam the internet everywhere. Soon, your phone will work off-grid too.
🧲 Planes ditch GPS (kinda): Scientists are turning to the Earth’s crust for next-gen flight nav. Turns out, underground magnetic quirks can help planes figure out where they are, no satellites needed. It’s called magnetic anomaly mapping, and it could be a game changer when GPS gets jammed, spoofed or quiet-quits midair.
This year marks the 67th anniversary of Sputnik 1, the first manmade satellite to orbit Earth. Today’s satellites are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. How much did Sputnik 1 weigh? Was it … A.) 150 pounds, B.) 189 pounds, C.) 1,500 pounds or D.) 500 pounds?
8,000 vs. 120
That’s the USA vs. China satellite count. SpaceX is casually orbiting 8,000 Starlink satellites. China? Still stuck at 120 (paywall link). It’s a space race where one kid showed up on a rocket bike and the other forgot their shoes. China’s grand plan for 27,000 satellites is stuck at 0.4% complete. Talk about taking a red-eye.
27
The number of new Kuiper satellites Amazon just flung into orbit. These are batch two of a planned 3,236, and they’re not just for show. Bezos wants your internet to come from space, like Musk.
2,899
That’s how many satellites China wants in its new orbiting AI supercomputer. It’s called the “Three-Body Computing Constellation,” and they’ve already launched 12. Each satellite runs its own 8 billion parameter AI model and talks to the others at up to 100 Gbps (with lasers, obviously). The goal is basically turning space into one giant neural net.
🛰️ High stakes laser tag: Amazon just fired its first 27 Kuiper satellites into orbit to take on Starlink, planning for 3,200 total. SpaceX already has 7,200 up there. Hope Earth’s atmosphere enjoys the new bumper-to-bumper congestion.
🛰️ Mark your calendars: Amazon’s finally launching its first internet satellites tomorrow, April 9 at 12 p.m. ET. It’s their shot at taking on SpaceX’s Starlink and bringing high-speed internet to the whole planet. Sure, Starlink already has thousands of satellites up there, but Amazon’s betting it can win you over by cranking out cheaper terminals. Fingers crossed the satellite doesn’t come with “some assembly required.”
Eclipse on demand: I thought this was interesting. The European Space Agency launched a high-tech mission to create artificial solar eclipses. Using two satellites flying in perfect formation, scientists can peek at the sun’s outer layer, normally studied only once every 18 months. Bummer … We can’t watch the show from Earth.
Find and track Starlink satellites in the sky
Did you know you can spot Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites from your backyard? More than six thousand of them are orbiting the Earth. Here’s how to see them.
This year: Satellite direct-to-cellular mobile phones
There are now over 5,000 Starlink satellites in orbit. Here’s what that means for you.