(Credit: SpaceX)
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SpaceX is offering the clearest look yet at the next major upgrade to Starlink, confirming the upcoming “V3” satellite is significantly longer and larger.
The company posted the image during the live stream of Monday’s 11th flight test of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle. The image compares the V3 to the earlier 1.5 Starlink satellite and the V2 models, as well as a human astronaut.
As you can see, the V3 adopts a pair of longer solar arrays. The central satellite bus is also bigger, likely to contain improved “phased array antennas,” enabling it to deliver gigabit internet speeds for the first time.
The larger size also underscores why SpaceX needs to use the more powerful Starship vehicle to deploy V3 satellites, rather than the existing Falcon 9 rocket. An earlier regulatory filing from the company indicates that each V3 could span up to 2,000 kilograms (4,409 pounds) in mass; current V2 Mini Optimized models weigh approximately 575 kilograms each.
The V3 satellites promise to not only offer gigabit speeds, but bulk up the internet system’s capacity to serve customers. Currently, SpaceX is forcing users in certain parts of the US to pay an extra $500 or even $1,000 to sign up as part of a “demand surcharge” due to too many subscribers in their local area.
Each V3 satellite boasts 1Tbps of download bandwidth, a 10 times increase over the V2 models. The company indicates that it plans to launch 60 V3 satellites with each future Starship launch. “That's more than 20 times the capacity added with every V2 Mini launch on Falcon 9,” SpaceX added in a tweet.
During the 11th test flight, SpaceX’s Starship successfully deployed eight dummy V3 Starlink “simulator” satellites. It's unclear when the company will start flying up real V3s. But SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has previously predicted it’ll occur at the end of this year or early in 2026.
That said, the company still needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission before it can operate the next-generation satellites for an expanded constellation of nearly 30,000. SpaceX has also indicated that Starlink users will need to upgrade to new hardware to access the gigabit speeds.