Elon Musk, the PayPal co-founder now leading Tesla and SpaceX, never seems to be short on radical ideas. His space outfit has filed an application with the FCC last week for a new network of satellites that will beam down internet access to areas that have little or almost no connection to the internet right now. SpaceX initially plans on launching two satellites initially and eight in total, it expects these satellites to last up to a year.
Earlier this year SpaceX raised $1 billion from Google and it’s believed that the company is going to put this money to use for this network of internet beaming satellites.
If it’s granted the permission to go ahead, SpaceX could launch these satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast instead of Cape Canaveral in Florida. This is mentioned in the orbital parameters provided in its application.
The test satellites will provide internet broadband to three locations, Redmond, Washington, Fremont, California and Hawthorne, California. Once the testing is completed more satellites will probably be sent up to connect more remote parts of the Earth to the internet.
SpaceX isn’t the only company that’s working to bring the internet to remote locations, Google is doing something similar with Project Loon and even Facebook is using internet-bearing drones for this purpose, but none of them are sending satellites up in space just yet.