This week, SpaceX released an update to its Starlink mobile app that makes it simpler to identify clear areas of sky and monitor connection failures, as well as a new dark mode for the user interface. The app updates were released yesterday, as SpaceX claimed 90,000 active users in its open “better than nothing” test phase, which has so far covered rural areas in 12 nations.
According to SpaceX’s Apple App Store changelog, the “fully upgraded and refurbished” version features a new option to analyse your surroundings for obstacles before installing a Starlink terminal. The software, like its predecessor, instructs users to scan their surroundings with their phones’ cameras, but the new version creates a small dome around your Starlink dish that overlays potential obstacles, which are color-coded. Users on Reddit were enthralled. With a new outage log that visualises statistics on use, latency, and uptime, customers can now track how frequently the Starlink service goes down.
Since 2019, SpaceX has launched 1,740 Starlink satellites, making it the world’s largest satellite operator, with around 1,650 currently in orbit (after some were de-orbited). Starlink has about 90,000 active customers, according to the company’s filing with the Federal Communications Commission (PDF), which includes both private houses and different government users such as schools, municipalities, and fire departments.
Starlink, a huge internet-from-space service, has the potential to upend the market for grounded broadband fibre, but the firm still has a long way to go, as we observed in our May assessment. Since then, SpaceX has made a few updates to its Starlink app, the most recent of which was released on Monday.
