One night in late April, my husband happened to look out the window and noticed, passing over our valley in southwest Montana, a string of around 30 mysterious lights—too fast to be aircraft and apparently too numerous to be satellites. The next day, a string of emails lit up a local listserv. People who’d observed the lights were wondering what they’d seen, and readers who knew what they’d seen were quick to respond: This was Starlink , a network of satellites intended to deliver high-speed broadband Internet to areas of the globe where such connectivity is currently costly, unreliable, or inaccessible. Deployed by SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by busy tech entrepreneur and would-be Martian Elon Musk, the network will ultimately consist of thousands of satellites and, according to its website, is projected to provide worldwide coverage by 2021. The night sky over Silverthorne, Colorado Credit: Nathan Anderson on Unsplash The company got closer to that goal l
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