Meanwhile SpaceX this morning launched 60 new satellites for Starlink, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company plans an initial 1,440 Starlink satellites to give global broadband coverage by the end of the year.
The next launch is due on Sunday 7 March at 22:30 ET (03:30 UT on Monday).
Starlink is already signing up customers in the US, Canada and the UK for its broadband service, focusing on rural areas (pictured). The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved up to 12,000 satellites for the project.
Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX and Starlink, confirmed the plans for a Texas factory in a tweet which read simply: “Creating the city of Starbase, Texas.” He followed that with: “From thence to Mars, and hence the Stars.”
According to Reuters, the company is looking for a Starlink engineer to work at a “new, state-of-the-art” factory in Austin, Texas to keep up with global demand.
But not everything is going well for Musk, SpaceX and Texas. A prototype of the company’s Starship, which is eventually destined for Mars, crashed and burned after returning to its Texas launchpad in the early hours of this morning.
It had climbed to 10km above the Gulf of Mexico before returning to base. After apparently landing successfully, with Musk tweeting “Starship SN10 landed in one piece!”, it caught fire and exploded.
Musk wants to use Starship to travel around the Moon with a party of eight others, including himself.
