SpaceX’s Starlink is starting to offer satellite internet in perhaps the most remote region of the world: Antarctica.
The company has shipped a Starlink dish to McMurdo Station, a US research facility based on an island right off the coast of Antarctica. In a tweet on Wednesday, the National Science Foundation said that scientists with the US Antarctic Program have been testing out the dish at the site to supply increased internet bandwidth.
In response, the official SpaceX account tweeted: “Starlink is now on all seven continents.”
The Starlink dish promises to offer faster internet speeds to McMurdo Station, which previously relied on satellite internet from other providers. The broadband quality had to be shared over a 17Mbps connection for the entire research facility, which can house over 1,000 people
Starlink, on the other hand, can offer much faster broadband due to the lower orbits of the company’s Starlink satellites. Download speeds can range from 50 to 200Mbps for residential users, and 100 to 350Mbps for business customers through a high-performance dish, which can also withstand extreme temperatures.
To serve users in Antarctica, SpaceX has been launching batches of Starlink satellites to orbit the Earth’s polar regions in an effort to beam high-speed broadband to users below, including in Alaska and northern Canada.
Normally, Starlink satellites fetch the internet data by relying on ground stations on the planet’s surface. But last year, SpaceX began outfitting new satellites with “laser links,” which can allow them to send and receive data with each other across space. This can allow the same satellites to beam broadband without relying on a ground station below.
“In such a remote location like Antarctica, this capability is enabled by Starlink's space laser network,” the company added in Wednesday’s tweet.
We reached out to the National Science Foundation for more information on the Starlink tests, and will update the story if we hear back. But previously, McMurdo Station was looking at funding a fiber-optic cable to Antarctica for better broadband access. We’ll have to see if Starlink can act as a suitable substitute.