SpaceX’s might soon start a Starlink manufacturing facility in Texas. As the company’s pace of launches increases, the speed with which they need to produce these satellites is also going to increase. Presently the company is doing almost 1-2 launches every month with 60 satellites in everyone. As SpaceX starts manufacturing satellites in Texas itself, they will be significantly able to cut down transportation cost and save time. The company targets to achieve global service before the completion of 2021. And for that, ramping up manufacturing and launch speeds is very necessary.
Starlink manufacturing facility in Texas
SpaceX posted a job listing saying that they are building “a new, state of the art manufacturing facility in Austin, TX”. The company also explicitly mentioned that this is due to the huge global demand for its services. SpaceX conducts a lot of launches from Texas, so having a manufacturing facility there does make sense. As of now, the company manufactures its satellites in Redmond, Washington. And they are able to manufacture about 120 satellites each month. The job listing also highlights some important details like how the manufacturing facility will be like.
It shows that the facility will be a high volume manufacturing unit and will make consumer side devices. This highly suggests that the company is planning to build Starlink kits in this new facility. For those who don’t know the Starlink kit includes an array dish antenna, Wi-FI router device, and some other devices. The technology used in these units are advanced and requires skilled professional and proper manufacturing facilities. Heck, the dish also has motors to align itself with the satellites in orbit.
If you were waiting to know about the jobs that were posted for this new facility, they are “Automation and Controls Engineer, Assembly and Packaging Equipment engineer Operations Engineer and Business analyst”. This is also not the first time that the company is building a manufacturing facility in Texas. They already have rockets, starships and other manufacturing plants in the state.
The goal with Starlink
The most recent launch of the 60 Starlink satellites has now increased their total number to 1,205. SpaceX plans to launch at least 1,500 satellites before enabling worldwide service. You can now pre-order the connection in India and expect that the internet connection to be available from 2o22. Areas that don’t have traditional internet connectivity like cellular or broadband will greatly benefit from this new service. SpaceX has already been seeing extraordinary demands. This is why they requested the FCC to allow them to operate $5 million Starlink antennas.
At the same time, the company has been constantly improving its network speeds and reducing its ping. Initially, the speed was about 100 Mbps which has now increased to 300 Mbps. And as the no of satellites increases, increasing the density of the network, SpaceX would like to achieve 10 Gbps speeds someday.
What do you think about the new Starlink manufacturing facility in Texas? And does the pace at which SpaceX is growing impress you? Let us know in the comments below. Also, if you found our content informative do like it and share it with your friends.
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