Elon Musk’s space broadband service Starlink has hinted that Elon Musk’s Starship will be ready for commercial flights in 2026.
Starlink on Tuesday posted a network update in which it discussed its third-generation satellites, each of which can provide “over a terabit per second of downlink capacity and over 200 Gbps of uplink capacity to customers on the ground.”
The spec of the third-gen sats has been public knowledge for months.
The network update adds a useful nugget of info by stating “SpaceX is targeting to begin launching its third-generation satellites in the first half of 2026.”
That’s nice to know, but also notable because Starlink’s 2024 progress report [PDF] notes that “The V3 Starlink satellite will be optimized for launch by SpaceX’s Starship vehicle.”
Starship, however, keeps blowing up. SpaceX hasn’t expressed disappointment about those failures and instead welcomed the data each flight produces.
Starlink’s statement suggests SpaceX thinks it can overcome whatever issues have plagued Starship and its booster in under a year. Or perhaps the space trucking company will have to use SpaceX’s sub-optimal Falcon rockets instead.
Latency and other niceties
The network update also reveals that Starlink’s satellite constellation now possesses a combined network capacity of “nearly 450 Tbps” and that median peak-hour latency is 25.7 milliseconds for customers in the United States.
The post notes that Starlink operates over 100 gateway sites in the US, all “strategically placed to deliver the lowest possible latency.” The company aspires to achieve stable 20 millisecond median latency.
Median peak-hour downloads in the US rattle along at 200 Mbps.
The network update also reveals that Starlink has “more than 6 million active customers and counting globally”, has over 7,800 satellites in orbit, and deploys “over 5 Tbps of capacity per week to the constellation with the current second generation of satellites.”
Those gen-3 sats will allow Starlink to launch plenty more capacity, faster, in 2026 … if Starship stops blowing up. ®