Elon Musk's New Second-Gen Starlink Satellites Are Too Big for Current Rockets
But they’re too big to launch for now. The Gen2 satellite is considerably larger than themore than 2,500Starlink satellites now orbiting340 milesabove the Earth’s surface. By contrast, the first-generation satellites weigh 573 pounds, or about one-fifth as much as Gen2. Starship is themost powerful rocketever built. It’s made up of two stages: a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage called Starship. SpaceX’s progress on Gen2 shows how much further along Starlink is when compared with its competitors....