Starlink

On January 16, 2015, at an invitation-only event in Seattle, Elon Musk laid out a plan that sounded like science fiction: roughly 4,000 small satellites orbiting at about 1,100 kilometers, beaming fast, low-lag broadband to nearly anywhere on the planet. Today that plan is the largest low Earth orbit network ever flown, with 13.6 million consumer subscribers at the end of September 2026 and service in about 167 countries and territories. Low Earth orbit means the satellites fly a few hundred kilometers up, close to the planet.

What it is

Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet service. Instead of one giant satellite parked far away, it uses thousands of small satellites flying low and fast, beaming high-speed broadband down to a pizza-box-sized dish that customers install without a technician. It also reaches ordinary cell phones through Direct to Cell, with no special hardware.

Why it exists

The problem Starlink solves is old and stubborn: ground-based networks stop where laying cable or building towers stops being worth the money. Rural homes, boats, recreational vehicles, and remote work sites have long been stuck with slow service or none, and Starlink aims right at those gaps.

There is a second reason. Elon Musk has said the subscription money will help pay for SpaceX's plan to settle Mars.

How it works

Latency, the lag between a click and a response, is why the height of the orbit matters so much. The current satellites fly at roughly 550 kilometers, close enough that the signal makes its round trip fast. A geostationary satellite, one that hangs over a fixed spot on the equator, orbits about 65 times higher, and that extra distance alone adds hundreds of milliseconds of delay, which is why older satellite internet stalls on a video call and Starlink does not.

The satellites also talk to each other through laser links that Starlink rates at up to 200 gigabits per second (Gbps) each, so data can hop across the fleet without touching the ground. The V2 Mini satellites introduced in 2023 weigh roughly 740 to 800 kilograms and carry about four times the user capacity of the first generation. Building all this meant inventing most of the underlying technology in-house, because no supplier sold parts for a network this big.

Where it stands today

Subscribers went from 1 million at the end of 2022 to 13.6 million at September 30, 2026, more than a thirteenfold jump in under four years.

Nearly 13,000 Starlink satellites had been launched by October 2, 2026, and about 11,100 of them were working, by astronomer Jonathan McDowell's count. SpaceX's initial public offering prospectus put the fleet at about 75% of all active maneuverable satellites in orbit at March 31, 2026. In the United States, Ookla speed tests put Starlink's median download near 100 megabits per second (Mbps), fast enough for video calls and high-definition streaming. In 2025 alone Starlink added 42 markets, more than 4.6 million customers, and roughly 3,000 satellites, according to its progress report.

Starlink marked 9 million customers in December 2025:

In February 2022, two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Elon Musk announced that Starlink service was active there:

Fedorov, by then Ukraine's defense minister, was back in Elon's replies on October 14, 2026, asking SpaceX to lift a speed limit on the satellite terminals that fly on Ukraine's drones. Elon answered that those terminals run on Starshield, the military network that the US government controls, and that commercial Starlink is limited to civilian and defensive use. The Starshield explainer has the full exchange.

What comes next

The third generation is the big leap. Flight 13 on July 24, 2026 was the first Starship flight to deploy Starlink V3 satellites, releasing 20 of them on a suborbital path, and Flight 14 on September 28, 2026 delivered 26 to orbit. Each V3 satellite is built to work at roughly 350 kilometers and to carry far more traffic than anything flying now.

More capacity in each satellite lets SpaceX serve more customers, and earn more revenue, for every kilogram it lifts to orbit. V2 Mini satellites keep flying on Falcon 9, but every V3 satellite rides Starship, which SpaceX plans to load with about 60 of them per launch once flights are routine.

The bottom line

Starlink began as a way to connect places that cables and towers skipped. By mid-2026 it was the business carrying SpaceX's profits while the company invested heavily in its AI unit.