SpaceX Launches Its First Batch of Starlink Satellites

On May 24, 2019, SpaceX launched its first batch of sixty operational Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. This deployment followed the flight of two prototype satellites, named Tintin A and Tintin B, in February 2018, and it marked the shift from test craft to a production design. The enterprise aimed to establish a mega-constellation capable of delivering continuous broadband coverage across the globe, an ambition rooted in conceptual studies from earlier decades that had previously stumbled against high operational costs and corporate bankruptcies.

Earlier satellite networks, including commercial programs of the 1990s such as Iridium, Globalstar, and Teledesic, had shown the potential of low Earth orbit to offer lower communication latency than traditional geostationary craft. However, several of these ventures ran into severe financial trouble, and none produced a global broadband network on the scale that SpaceX would later pursue.