A little over a year ago, one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft flew a team of four private astronauts to orbit on a mission that made history with the first fully commercial spacewalk.
Jared Isaacman and Sarah Gillis briefly floated out the door of the Dragon capsule, wearing SpaceX-built pressure suits to protect them against the hostile environment of space. It was the first time anyone ventured outside of their spacecraft without the involvement of a government space agency.
The mission, named Polaris Dawn, made an important contribution in another area. It was the first space mission to connect with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, using laser links between the Dragon spacecraft and Starlink satellites to communicate with the Earth.
Most satellites only have sporadic connectivity with their operators back on Earth. As satellites zip around the planet, they periodically pass over ground stations designed to receive data and transmit commands back up to the spacecraft. One exception is the International Space Station, which enjoys near-continuous communications through a fleet of NASA data relay satellites.
But those satellites are expensive. They exist only to serve government missions, like the ISS and the Hubble Space Telescope. The Starlink network, by contrast, connects with millions of users, whether they’re at home, on the road, at sea, or in the air.
One company, a California-based startup named Muon Space, is partnering with SpaceX to bring Starlink connectivity to low-Earth orbit. Muon announced Tuesday it will soon install Starlink terminals on its satellites, becoming the first commercial user, other than SpaceX itself, to use Starlink for in-flight connectivity in low-Earth orbit.
It’s all about the data
Muon was founded four years ago by a team of space industry veterans who sought to change the way satellites are built. While launch costs are coming down, satellite manufacturing remains an expensive business. Muon’s mission is to combine hardware, software, and operations expertise to design, build, and operate constellations of low-Earth orbit satellites on behalf of customers.