Elon Musk mentioned SpaceX will proceed funding its Starlink web service in Ukraine on Saturday (Oct. 15), backtracking from the corporate’s push to ask the Pentagon to foot the invoice.
The SpaceX CEO and billionaire wrote on Twitter that his spaceflight firm will proceed to offer Starlink internet service without charge to Ukraine, which is presently fighting off a Russian invasion, after saying earlier this month that the trouble has cost SpaceX $80 million (opens in new tab) up to now.
“To hell with it … though Starlink continues to be dropping cash & different firms are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll simply preserve funding Ukraine govt free of charge,” Musk wrote (opens in new tab) on Twitter Saturday.
Associated: Elon Musk says SpaceX won’t keep funding Starlink in Ukraine, asks Pentagon to take over
The hell with it … though Starlink continues to be dropping cash & different firms are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll simply preserve funding Ukraine govt free of chargeOctober 15, 2022
Musk’s assertion comes after a report from CNN (opens in new tab) on a SpaceX letter asking the U.S. navy to start overlaying prices for Starlink service in Ukraine. CNN reported (opens in new tab) that SpaceX wrote the Pentagon in September to say the corporate might not cowl Starlink service in Ukraine free of charge, including that it could price the corporate to $120 million for the remainder of 2022 and an estimated $400 million for the subsequent 12 months.
“We aren’t ready to additional donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the present terminals for an indefinite time frame,” the letter said.
Elon Musk and SpaceX started sending Starlink terminals that enable entry to the corporate’s satellite web service to Ukraine in late February shortly after Russian troops invaded and a public name for assist from Ukrainian officers.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell mentioned on the time that the corporate had been working on the project for weeks earlier than Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and the nation’s minister of digital transformation, put out the decision for assist through Twitter on Feb. 26. By Feb. 28, the primary Starlink terminals have been on the bottom in Ukraine.
By early April, SpaceX and USAID announced a public-private partnership that had delivered 5,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine, with over 3,000 of them supplied straight by SpaceX. To this point, SpaceX has set about 20,000 terminals to Ukraine, according to (opens in new tab) the New York Occasions.
SpaceX’s Starlink web service is a space-based broadband community that goals present world entry to high-speed internets utilizing an unlimited constellation of satellites in orbit. To do this, SpaceX has been launching satellites at a prolific price, with dozens of satellites positioned into orbit at a time throughout near-weekly launches. The service prices $110 per thirty days, with an preliminary one-time {hardware} price of $599.
SpaceX’s most recent Starlink launch was on Oct. 5, when the corporate positioned one other 52 Starlink satellites into orbit. SpaceX has launched greater than 3,400 Starlink satellites as far as it really works to construct a constellation 12,000 satellites robust. The corporate has additionally utilized for permission to launch one other 30,000 satellites past that to spice up its web community.
Electronic mail Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com (opens in new tab) or observe him @tariqjmalik (opens in new tab). Observe us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab).
