Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, has announced that the rocket company’s satellite internet unit, Starlink, had achieved cash flow breakeven, a fulfillment of the 2021 promise that SpaceX would spin off and take Starlink public once its cash flow was predictable.
Musk, in a post on social media platform X said Starlink has now become a majority of all active satellites adding that the company will have launched a majority of all satellites cumulatively from Earth by 2024.
Starlink has since 2019 grown its network in low-Earth orbit to about 5,000 satellites, swiftly positioning itself as the world’s largest satellite operator and a rival to satellite internet firms such as Viasat and Eutelsat’s newly acquired by OneWeb.
Starlink has been in the spotlight since last year as it helps provide Ukraine with satellite communications key to its war efforts against Russia and Musk had also promised that Starlink will support communication links in the battlefront Gaza for internationally recognized aid organizations.
People in Gaza had experience telephone and internet blackout as they were isolated and cut off from the world and from each other.
Musk has sought to establish the Starlink business unit as a crucial source of revenue to fund SpaceX’s more capital-intensive projects such as its next-generation Starship, a giant reusable rocket the company intends to fly to the moon for NASA within the next decade.