Musk’s Starlink Brings Internet to Ukraine, and Attention to a New Space Race
A SpaceX rocket carrying 49 Starlink satellites launches from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Feb. 2.
Photographer: Paul Hennessy/Getty Images
As the U.S. and its allies provide Ukraine with aid, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government is also getting assistance from a less likely source: Elon Musk. Soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin started the war and Ukraine publicly pleaded for help, Musk’s SpaceX enabled its Starlink satellite broadband service in Ukraine and began shipping additional dishes. Those dishes are especially valuable now that Russia’s military is targeting Ukrainian infrastructure. “Received the second shipment of Starlink stations!” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, tweeted on March 9. “@elonmusk keeps his word!”
The dishes Musk has provided to Ukraine and to Tonga following its January tsunami have cast a spotlight on low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites, a new generation of spacecraft that can circle the globe in just 90 minutes and connect users to the internet. They’re small and inexpensive: A Starlink satellite weighs 260 kilograms (573 pounds) and costs from $250,000 to $500,000, while an Inmarsat Group Holdings Ltd. geostationary satellite can clock in at 4 metric tons and sell for $130 million.