BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. (WESH) — SpaceX is launching 60 satellites on a rocket from Cape Canaveral sometime next week.
The original launch time was scheduled for 11 p.m. Wednesday, but was scrubbed due to upper level winds. A new launch had been scheduled for Thursday, but was also canceled.
The next launch opportunity will be sometime next week, officials said.
The satellites will one day bring us internet access from anywhere in the world.
They are all wedged into the nose cone of a rocket on launch pad 40, and are just the start of a network that could have thousands of them.
This will be the 23-story Falcon 9’s heaviest load.
Each folded-up satellite weighs 500 pounds, for a total payload of 15 tons.
These are experimental crafts, meant to pave the way for one of SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s vision of a world cocooned by a network of up to 12,000 of these satellites.
The satellites could keep everyone alive connected to the internet all the time.
The satellites will have cameras to avoid space debris, and perhaps each other, and would be linked by lasers. The network is called Starlink, and it’s one of several plans to drench the world in internet access.
A Merritt Island factory, One Web, is building a similar system, but Musk appears to be getting there first, in a venture that could make him tons of money.
That money that could help fund Musk’s vision to colonize Mars.
