Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet is Now Available in Antarctica

SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet is now available on all seven of the world's continents.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently announced that SpaceX is testing its satellite internet service in its station in Antarctica, allowing Starlink to expand to the world's seventh continent.

The National Science Foundation is an independent US federal agency created by congress in 1950 that supports all fields of fundamental research and education in non-medical science and engineering, per the Foundation's About Us page.

Starlink Antarctica Expansion Details

The NSF mentioned on its official Twitter page that SpaceX's Starlink is testing its satellite internet service with a newly deployed Starlink dish at its McMurdo Station.

The station, according to PCMag, is an American research facility established on an island off Antarctica's coast. As you should know, Antarctica is the most remote continent in the world. It is also a major hub for climate science and geology.

Thanks to Starlink's capabilities, the Foundation now experiences a larger bandwidth and improved connectivity for science support. Previously, the foundation relied on satellite internet from other providers, which had a broadband quality connection.

This internet connection is then needed to be shared over a 17mbnps connection for the entire research facility, which plays host to over 1,000 people, meaning that competition for the limited bandwidth is fierce, per Tech Crunch.

Thanks to Starlink's space laser network, people at the NSF's McMurdo station can now experience download speeds that can range from 50 to 200 Mbps if they're residential or 100 to 350 Mbps for business customers.

How Did Starlink Reach Antarctica?

SpaceX also celebrated the fact that its satellite internet service is now available on all seven continents on its official Twitter page, with the company crediting Starlink's space laser network, making it capable of reaching remote locations like Antarctica.

Starlink satellites previously relied on ground stations on Earth to fetch internet data, which can affect internet speeds. Thankfully, SpaceX began outfitting its new Starlink satellites with "laser links" that allow them to send and receive data with each other in Earth's low orbit.

In addition to SpaceX improving its satellites with better instruments, it also launched Starlink satellites to orbit the Earth's polar regions to provide satellite internet service to users in the region, such as those in Alaska, northern Canada, and more recently, Antarctica.

SpaceX is not done with its improvements to its Starlink satellite constellation yet. The company is drawing up plans to launch the larger and more capable Starlink Version 2 satellites in Earth's low orbit next year, per Space.com.

Thanks to their improved capabilities, the new satellites can provide users with faster and adaptable internet connections and beam satellite internet service directly to smartphones. This new capability is also the focus of SpaceX's joint venture with T-Mobile called "Coverage Above and Beyond," which was announced in late August, per T-Mobile's announcement.