SpaceX has made a mysterious new regulatory filing for 29,888 satellites, possibly in an attempt to secure more radio spectrum to upgrade Starlink.
The company submitted the filing to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a worldwide regulator that oversees radio frequency allocation for satellite providers. The submission covers 29,988 satellites across 288 orbital planes for altitudes ranging between 350 and 614 kilometers, according to Space Intel Report, which was first to report the news.
Interestingly, the filing initially made no mention of SpaceX on the ITU’s public-facing website. Instead, it labeled the filing as coming from the Kingdom of Tonga, an island country in Polynesia. But on Friday, the ITU confirmed that SpaceX is the operating agency behind the submission.
“ITU cannot, however, confirm that this filing is for additional satellites, it may be for additional frequencies,” a spokesman for the agency told PCMag.
SpaceX hasn’t responded to a request for comment. But back in 2019, the company filed paperwork with the ITU for 30,000 Starlink satellites. So it’s possible the new submission is related to augmenting the company’s existing plans for Starlink, a space-based internet system currently serving over 2 million users.
Tim Farrar, a consultant in the satellite communications industry, views the ITU filing as a SpaceX attempt to ensure it can upgrade Starlink amid growing competition. “Partly this is an attempt to just grab spectrum that no one else is thinking about yet,” he told PCMag.
Indeed, the company’s submission mentions using the satellites to connect over the 123,000MHz to 174,500MHz frequencies, radio bands that Starlink has yet to tap.
Farrar added: “In terms of putting it to use, Starlink’s satellites are getting bigger with larger antennas and more user beams on the ground. That means each satellite has to handle more user data that it also needs to receive from and send back to the gateways that connect the system to the internet.”
“These frequencies will potentially be useful in augmenting those gateway links to carry more traffic, as a next step after Starlink adds the slightly lower E-band frequencies (70-80GHz) to their system, which they are working on at the moment,” he said.
The ITU filing also arrives as SpaceX has been developing Starshield, a satellite internet system that piggybacks on the Starlink technology to supply communications for national defense purposes. Last month, the Pentagon awarded SpaceX’s Starshield program a contract to power military communications for the US Armed Forces.