CAPE CANAVERAL: Billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX postponed a planned Wednesday night blastoff of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the first 60 satellites for his new Starlink internet service, citing excessive winds over the Florida launch site. Musk said he expects revenues from rocket launch services provided by his privately held Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, to top out at about $3 billion per year. All consist of tiny satellites that orbit closer to Earth than traditional communications satellites, a radical shift made possible by leaps in laser technology and computer chips. Frustrated with the pace at which Starlink satellites were being developed, he fired at least seven members of the program's senior management team at a campus in Redmond, Washington, outside Seattle, Reuters reported. But he wavered on the timeline for placing as many as 12,000 satellites into orbit as the company had previously described.

Source: Mint May 16, 2019 03:56 UTC