Adam Satariano, Scott Reinhard, Cade Metz, Sheera Frenkel and Malika Khurana
On March 17, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the leader of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, dialed into a call to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Over the secure line, the two military leaders conferred on air defense systems, real-time battlefield assessments and shared intelligence on Russia’s military losses.
They also talked about Elon Musk.
General Zaluzhnyi raised the topic of Starlink, the satellite internet technology made by Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, three people with knowledge of the conversation said. Ukraine’s battlefield decisions depended on the continued use of Starlink for communications, General Zaluzhnyi said, and his country wanted to ensure access and discuss how to cover the cost of the service.
General Zaluzhnyi also asked if the United States had an assessment of Mr. Musk, who has sprawling business interests and murky politics — to which American officials gave no answer.
Mr. Musk, who leads SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, has become the most dominant player in space as he has steadily amassed power over the strategically significant field of satellite internet. Yet faced with little regulation and oversight, his erratic and personality-driven style has increasingly worried militaries and political leaders around the world, with the tech billionaire sometimes wielding his authority in unpredictable ways.
Since 2019, Mr. Musk has sent SpaceX rockets into space nearly every week that deliver dozens of sofa-size satellites into orbit. The satellites communicate with terminals on Earth, so they can beam high-speed internet to nearly every corner of the planet. Today, more than 4,500 Starlink satellites are in the skies, accounting for more than 50 percent of all active satellites. They have already started changing the complexion of the night sky, even before accounting for Mr. Musk’s plans to have as many as 42,000 satellites in orbit in the coming years.
A global satellite network
There are over 4,500 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth. What appear to be long lines here are recently launched satellites approaching their place in orbit.
An animation showing circles that represent Starlink satellites orbiting Earth as it rotates. Most of the satellites are spaced out and move in a gridlike formation between Earth’s poles, while a few are closely clustered and move together in lines.
Notes: Data includes Starlink satellites launched through July 10. Animation shows approximately 10 minutes of orbiting Starlink satellites. Earth rotation is for display purposes only.
The power of the technology, which has helped push the value of closely held SpaceX to nearly $140 billion, is just beginning to be felt.
Starlink is often the only way to get internet access in war zones, remote areas and places hit by natural disasters. It is used in Ukraine for coordinating drone strikes and intelligence gathering. Activists in Iran and Turkey have sought to use the service as a hedge against government controls. The U.S. Defense Department is a big Starlink customer, while other militaries, such as in Japan, are testing the technology.
But Mr. Musk’s near total control of satellite internet has raised alarms.
A combustible personality, the 52-year-old’s allegiances are fuzzy. While Mr. Musk is hailed as a genius innovator, he alone can decide to shut down Starlink internet access for a customer or country, and he has the ability to leverage sensitive information that the service gathers. Such concerns have been heightened because no companies or governments have come close to matching what he has built.
In Ukraine, some fears have been realized. Mr. Musk has restricted Starlink access multiple times during the war, people familiar with the situation said. At one point, he denied the Ukrainian military’s request to turn on Starlink near Crimea, the Russian-controlled territory, affecting battlefield strategy. Last year, he publicly floated a “peace plan” for the war that seemed aligned with Russian interests.
At times, Mr. Musk has openly flaunted Starlink’s capabilities. “Between, Tesla, Starlink & Twitter, I may have more real-time global economic data in one head than anyone ever,” he tweeted in April.
Starlinks are a majority of active satellites orbiting Earth
Starlink satellites operate approximately 300 miles above Earth in what is known as “low-Earth orbit.” That's more than 60 times closer than traditional satellite internet services that operate at higher altitudes in “geosynchronous orbit.”
Animated circles that represent satellites move around the Earth. Some are near Earth in low-Earth orbit, and others are farther away in geosynchronous orbit, forming a wide ring. Text in the graphic reads, “There are over 10,300 satellites orbiting the Earth. Over 80% of those satellites are currently active. 53% of active satellites are Starlink.” The Starlink satellites are highlighted and are all operating in low-Earth orbit.
Note: Data is as of July 25. The animation shows approximately one hour of orbiting satellites.
Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment. SpaceX declined to comment.
Worried about over-dependence on Mr. Musk’s technology, Ukrainian officials have talked with other satellite internet providers, though they acknowledged none rival Starlink’s reach.
“Starlink is indeed the blood of our entire communication infrastructure now,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital minister, said in an interview.
At least nine countries — including in Europe and the Middle East — have also brought up Starlink with American officials over the past 18 months, with some questioning Mr. Musk’s power over the technology, two U.S. intelligence officials briefed on the discussions said. Few nations will speak publicly about their concerns, for fear of alienating Mr. Musk, said intelligence and cybersecurity officials briefed on the conversations.
U.S. officials have said little publicly about Starlink as they balance domestic and geopolitical priorities related to Mr. Musk, who has criticized President Biden but whose technology is unavoidable.
The federal government is one of SpaceX’s biggest customers, using its rockets for NASA missions and launching military surveillance satellites. Senior Pentagon officials have tried mediating issues involving Starlink, particularly Ukraine, a person familiar with the discussions said.
The Defense Department confirmed it contracts with Starlink, but it declined to elaborate, citing “the critical nature of these systems.”
Other governments are wary. Taiwan, which has an internet infrastructure that could be vulnerable in the event of a Chinese invasion, is reluctant to use the service partly because of Mr. Musk’s business links to China, Taiwanese and American officials said.
China has its own concerns. Mr. Musk said last year that Beijing sought assurances that he would not turn Starlink on inside the country, where the internet is controlled and censored by the state. In 2020, China registered with an international body to launch 13,000 internet satellites of its own.
The European Union, partly driven by misgivings about Starlink and Mr. Musk, also earmarked 2.4 billion euros, or $2.6 billion, last year to build a satellite constellation for civilian and military use.
“This is not just one company, but one person,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, a cybersecurity expert who co-founded the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank and has advised governments on satellite internet. “You are completely beholden to his whims and desires.”
Reaching for the skies
Sir Martin Sweeting, a British engineer who founded the satellite design and manufacturing company Surrey Satellite Technology, was encouraged by a business associate in 2001 to meet with a “chap who wants to put a greenhouse on Mars.” It turned out to be Mr. Musk.
Mr. Sweeting and Mr. Musk met soon after for breakfast at a space conference in Colorado, where the tech entrepreneur criticized NASA and talked about building a private space fleet.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive, during a test flight of a Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Fla., in 2019.
Mike Blake/ Reuters
“He was very focused,” said Mr. Sweeting, whose company later received an investment from Mr. Musk and had him on its board of directors before it sold to Airbus in 2009.
Mr. Musk was also interested in an emerging field of research where small satellites are placed in the sky several hundred miles above sea level, an area known as “low-Earth orbit,” Mr. Sweeting said.
Footage of a launch of a SpaceX rocket, of a stack of Starlink satellites being released in space, and of a rocket landing back on Earth.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Starlink satellites
Video footage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 spaceship on its first launch of Starlink satellites in May 2019, of the Falcon 9 deploying 60 Starlink satellites into space in June 2020, and of the spaceship returning to Earth in June 2023.
SpaceX and Getty Images
Their work together was one of the earliest examples of Mr. Musk’s focus on a technology that would help underpin Starlink. Satellites dating to the 1960s are typically bigger — often the size of school buses — and located higher in space, in what is known as “geosynchronous orbit,” limiting their communication capabilities. Smaller satellites can orbit at a lower altitude, allowing them to link up with terminals on Earth to beam high-speed internet service to far-flung locations.
Many small satellites are necessary for this to work. That’s because as one satellite moves above a Starlink terminal on land, it hands the internet signal to another satellite behind it to keep up a single, uninterrupted flow to users below.
How Starlink customers connect to the internet
Starlink satellites orbit at much lower altitudes than traditional satellite internet services. As a result, the area that each Starlink satellite covers is smaller, requiring terminals on the ground to continually connect with the nearest passing satellite.
Diagram illustrating a Starlink satellite in low-Earth orbit. Text reads “A constellation of small satellites blankets the globe, providing sweeping coverage in countries Starlink is permitted to operate.” Satellites link to one another using lasers, and connect to a Starlink terminal, known as a dishy, which constantly scans the sky to connect with the nearest satellite above. Using the dishy, customers can connect to the internet with their devices.
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