Elon Musk's "Starlink" program plans to release 12,000 satellites to surround the earth before 2027, with 713 satellites already already in orbit.

submitted by magnora7 from en.wikipedia.org

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[–]magnora7[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I knew they were putting up a lot of satellites with this program, but I didn't realize it was TWELVE THOUSAND of them.

They're supposed to bring internet to the whole world, and have pings that are 1/50th of the high pings of normal geostationary satellites, because they're at much lower altitude. But to keep their position, they have to constantly have ion engines slowly firing away from earth. If their power is cut they will fall back to Earth and burn up in a matter of months, according to the wiki article.