Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched nearly 400 Starlink satellites in May

When Tesla’s Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, he was looking to work toward eventually building a sustainable human settlement on Mars.

Fast-forward 23 years and no one is living on the rusty red planet, but SpaceX has become the world’s largest internet satellite company, launching another 398 Starlink satellites in a “massive May” for the company.

That’s a record month for SpaceX, coming hot off the heels of a public rocket explosion, and it takes the total deployed to more than 8,800, some 7,600 of which are still actively whizzing around Earth, per data from satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell. The SpaceX tally is also roughly 40% of all satellites launched since Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, was fired into orbit all the way back in 1957.

Unlike most communications satellites, which are typically larger, Starlink’s low-orbit satellites zip around Earth at relatively low altitudes — allowing faster transmissions between satellites and terminals. As SpaceX has grown its unique constellation, it’s enabled service coverage even in areas where traditional internet has been limited, like Ukraine’s battlefields or areas hit by natural disasters.

Unsurprisingly, that offering has become a core part of SpaceX’s commercial value, with Musk noting that “Starlink internet is what is being used to pay for humanity going to Mars,” in a recent update to employees at SpaceX’s Starship facility.

Now serving more than 5 million customers, Starlink’s revenues are estimated to have reached some $6.6 billion in 2024. That figure is expected to rise rapidly in the coming decade — a key underpinning of why the company has an eye-watering $350 billion valuation despite (literally) burning billions of dollars by launching rockets into space.