SpaceX has received good news from Indias government with reports that its Starlink broadband service is to receive an expedited fast-track approval to operate in India ahead of Elon Musks visit to the country. Starlink was also authorised for use in Albania last week. However, there are doubts in some quarters over Starlinks profitability.
Bloomberg, in a report, talks about Starlink losing hundreds of dollars on each of the near-3 million costly antenna terminals it has supplied to users.
SpaceXs CFO Bret Johnsen, speaking at the Washington Satellite 2024 event in March, declined to elaborate on Elon Musks suggestions to investors that Starlink had achieved breakeven cashflow last year. Johnsen said he did not want to quantify numbers but that it was in positive cashflow and profitable territory for our satellite business now.
One the positive side of the ledger Bloomberg says that SpaceX itself, which holds the rocket and Starlink businesses, is likely see overall sales of around $15 billion this year from $4.7 billion a year ago. Bloomberg says that SpaceXs current investors expect the company to need to raise more cash or get a fresh infusion from Musk himself.
SpaceXs weekend launch was managed with the 20th use of a Falcon 9 booster stage, a worlds record for the company. The launch means that there has been a total of 6,212 Starlinks launched of which 5,809 are still in orbit and 5,744 are considered by astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell.
The 20th launch means that SpaceX is halfway to matching the Space Shuttles record 39 orbital flights for its Discovery vehicle. The difference is that SpaceX used its Booster #1062 twenty times in just three-and-a-half years, while NASAs most successful Space Shuttle flew for 27 years (from 1984 to 2011).
Booster #1062 during its lifetime which no doubt will continue launched a batch of satellites for OneWeb, Nilesat 301 as well as Arabsats BADR-8. It has also helped put eight astronauts and more than 261 metric tons into orbit. It last launched on March 16th, and therefore a turnaround from landing to re-flight in just 27 days.
These launch records tend only to last for a few weeks until they are surpassed! SpaceX has handled 38 orbital missions this year.
Meanwhile, SpaceX last week asked the FCC for an experimental licence to cover the testing of 840 Direct-To-Cell satellites covering Australia (Optus), New Zealand (One New Zealand), Japan (KDDI), and Canada (Rogers). SpaceX explained that it intends to use a portion of its mobile partners authorised frequencies.
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SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers - Advanced Television