SpaceX's latest residential dish - the Starlink V5 - is now available in "select areas." It's notably smaller and lighter than the V4 dish with improved power efficiency. It'll be available in more places as SpaceX ramps up production to meet global demand. The company notes that Starlink V5 is not intended for in-motion use - for that you'll have to wait for the revamped Starlink Mini teased alongside the V5 last month.
SpaceX is currently ahead of last year's record-setting pace for Starlink satellite deployments. SpaceX launched 1,589 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit in the first half of 2026, according to launch data compiled by Jonathan McDowell's satellite tracker, compared to 1,489 satellites deployed at the same point in 2025.
2025 was already a record year for SpaceX, with the company deploying 3,180 Starlink satellites in total. SpaceX has launched over 12,400 Starlink satellites since the constellation's inception, with nearly 11,000 still functioning.
To put these numbers into perspective, Amazon's fledgling Leo service has only deploye …
]]>
Amazon says it now has enough satellites operating in low-Earth orbit to light up its Starlink internet competitor. With last night's launch, Amazon Leo has 396 satellites deployed, which is "enough to support continuous service across initial latitudes," according to Chris Weber, VP heading up business and product for Amazon Leo. That puts the company on track to meet its "mid-2026" target for commercial availability. Just don't expect miracles on day one.
SpaceX went live with its "Better than nothing beta" back in 2020 when it had almost 900 satellites operating in low-Earth orbit. It initially served a narrow band of users in the upper …
]]>
While Blue Origin investigates the root cause behind last night's spectacular explosion of its New Glenn rocket, it's already clear that this will be a major setback for NASA's Moon base plans and Amazon's fledgling Leo space internet constellation.
The incident occurred at about 9PM at Blue Origin's Florida launch site during a hot-fire test, where seven engines in the booster stage are lit while keeping the 322-foot-tall rocket fixed to the launchpad. The explosion and ensuing fireball severely damaged the only launchpad Blue Origin has for its New Glenn rocket.
Code in recent Starlink firmware suggests that SpaceX might soon release a version of its smallest internet dish with an integrated battery. A battery-powered Starlink Mini would offer untethered portability for vanlifers, emergency responders, and anyone who wants fast, low-latency internet from almost anywhere on the planet.
University researcher Jinwei Zhao spotted a number of strings hinting at the integrated battery in a May firmware release, according to PCMag. The "message DishBatteryStats" line suggests code designed to return specific fields from an integrated battery, including the current state_of_charge. If the dish were simply …
]]>
This weekend's scheduled Blue Origin rocket launch is rather momentous. Success would signal an end to SpaceX's monopoly on reusable orbital launch vehicles, and set up a three-way race to make that "No Service" indicator on your phone disappear forever.
On Sunday morning, Jeff Bezos' massive New Glenn rocket is scheduled to launch with the first-stage booster that launched and landed on the program's second mission last November. It's a critical test, because cost-effective booster reuse is what's made SpaceX's Falcon 9 so dominant.
Amazon desperately needs a reusable rocket of its own to accelerate its Leo launches. Without one, it's onl …
]]>
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company's space-internet service Leo (formerly known as Project Kuiper) will "launch in mid-2026." I'm going to assume that means proper commercial availability since the company already announced the start of an "enterprise preview" at the end of 2025, when the service was supposed to originally launch.
Unlike SpaceX's Starlink service, Amazon doesn't (yet) have its own fleet of rockets to regularly send Leo satellites into low-Earth orbit. That's meant hitching rides with a variety of launch partners, including SpaceX, until Jeff Bezos' own reusable New Glenn rocket is fully operational.
Amazon has FCC app …
]]>
SpaceX has the most internet-beaming satellites in its constellation, but the competition is coming, and now Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, has announced the TeraWave network. It says TeraWave will offer bandwidth of up to 6Tb available anywhere on Earth, for both upload and download.
The only wrinkle? Even after satellite deployments are scheduled to start near the end of 2027, you probably won't be able to connect directly. That's by design, as former Amazon Alexa boss and current Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a post that it's "purpose-built for enterprise customers."
Blue Origin's network has a "multi-orbit" design of 5,408 …
]]>
Late Wednesday night at about 11PM CT, SpaceX was about to perform a static fire test of Ship 36, ahead of a planned 10th flight test for its Starship, when there was suddenly a massive explosion at the Massey's Testing Center site. SpaceX says "A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for," and that there are no hazards to residents in the area of its recently incorporated town of Starbase, Texas.
"After completing a single-engine static fire earlier this week, the vehicle was in the process of loading cryogenic propellant for a six-engine static fire when a sudde …
]]>
With yet another failed Starship test this week, in which the ambitious heavy rocket exploded once again, you might reasonably suspect that luck has finally run out for SpaceX.
But this degree of failure during a development process isn't actually unusual, according to Wendy Whitman Cobb, a space policy expert with the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, especially when you're testing new space technology as complex as a large rocket. However, the Starship tests are meaningfully different from the slow, steady pace of development that we've come to expect from the space sector.
"The reason a lot of people perceive this to be unusual …
]]>