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Next week looks set to be a pivotal moment for SpaceX as the company will attempt to launch their Starship rocket again (Flight 14), which will for the first time attempt to place Starship into a proper orbit around the Earth and then deliver 26 fully operational commercial Starlink V3 broadband satellites (not test samples like before).
Starlink currently has around 11,100 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – mostly at altitudes of between c.340-550km. Residential users in the UK pay from £40 a month for the 100Mbps unlimited data plan, which also promises uploads of c.15-35Mbps and low latency connectivity (c.20ms). Faster packages exist at greater cost, while more restrictive (data capped) options are available for roaming (e.g. £55 per month for 100GB of data).
At present most of Starlink’s satellites are first or second generation models. The new third generation (GEN3 or V3) satellites are much bigger and significantly more powerful, which means they are only commercially viable when launched on top of a massive rocket like Starship. SpaceX has in fact launched V3 satellites using Starship before as part of a recent test sample, but they were not intended for commercial use and were later destroyed (intentionally).