Elon Musk Reveals Starlink’s Huge Coverage Milestone

In a tweet, Elon Musk confirmed that Starlink coverage has now reached all seven continents on Earth — including Antarctica. Musk’s announcement comes nearly a week after the National Science Foundation confirmed that scientists with the U.S. Antarctic Program were able to successfully deploy a Starlink dish at the McMurdo Station, a U.S. research facility located off the coast of Antarctica. The arrival of Starlink in Antarctica is expected to vastly improve the internet experience at the station, which until recently had to share a 17 Mbps connection among the entire research community consisting of more than 1000 individuals, according to the USAP website. 

This is not the first time SpaceX has brought reliable internet connectivity to a remote region of the planet. Earlier this year when the company sent 46 satellites into space, they orbited the northern extremities of the planet — thereby enabling coverage to regions like Alaska, Northern Canada, and Greenland. 

Apart from working on expanding Starlink’s reach and coverage, SpaceX was also in the news for working on an initiative to bring connectivity to areas bereft of cellular coverage. The company is collaborating with T-Mobile to give its subscribers the ability to send and receive text messages from any part of the continental United States and some parts of Alaska and Hawaii — even when they are out of cellular coverage. The ability to text via satellite is expected to arrive by 2023 after SpaceX launches its Starlink Version 2 satellites that can beam the service directly to smartphones.