SpaceX Offers Rare Peek Inside a Starlink Satellite Factory, Tips 'Mini Lasers'

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SpaceX has offered a rare look at its Starlink factory in Redmond, Washington, which can pump out 70 satellites per week.

The company posted a video about the Redmond facility on Tuesday in the run-up to SpaceX’s tenth flight test for its Starship vehicle, which was rescheduled due to weather. “All of those Starlink satellites came from here, right in Redmond,” Akash Badshah, SpaceX senior director for satellite engineering, says in the clip.

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The footage offers a look inside the factory, showcasing component production and the satellite assembly and packaging process. “At SpaceX, we iterate very fast and we have learned how to build satellites at the 70-satellite-a-week rate,” adds Cornelia Rosu, a SpaceX senior director for Starlink production.

That translates to 3,640 per year, a huge increase from 2020 when SpaceX said it could only manufacture 120 satellites per month.

The manufacturing capability is crucial since SpaceX is working to launch and operate close to 30,000 Starlink satellites, pending approval from the Federal Communications Commission. The goal is to increase Starlink’s coverage and capacity and offer gigabit speeds. SpaceX currently only has regulatory clearance to operate about 12,000 satellites.

Mini Lasers for Super-Fast Speeds

The footage also reveals a new detail about SpaceX’s efforts to equip Starlink satellites with laser links, enabling them to communicate with each other in orbit and route data at up to 200Gbps. SpaceX has developed a smaller “mini laser” component that fits on a satellite. However, SpaceX VP of Satellite Engineering Michael Nicolls tweeted that the mini laser is meant for third-party satellites and space stations, which can use the laser links to connect to the Starlink network.

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“The mini laser is designed to achieve link speeds of 25Gbps at distances up to 4,000 km, and was recently successfully tested in orbit on a satellite launched on Starlink G10-20,” he said.

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Outside of the manufacturing capacity, SpaceX is also depending on the Starship vehicle to help it carry the more powerful, but heavier V3 Starlink satellites into space. In a separate clip, SpaceX showed a demo reel of how Starship will deliver the V3 satellites into Earth’s orbit.

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The tenth Starship test flight will also carry “eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites” to test the vehicle’s deployment capabilities. The company has rescheduled the flight for a launch window today starting at 6:30 p.m. CT (7:30 p.m. EST).

SpaceX also has a factory in Bastrop, Texas, which is focused on building the antenna dishes that consumers use to receive satellite internet through Starlink. In March, the company revealed that the factory is already producing 15,000 Starlink dishes per day.