Late Saturday night, Elon Musk CEO of SpaceX tweeted that Starlink service was available in Ukraine and that “more terminals” were “en route.” Earlier on Saturday, the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine had directly appealed to Musk to help his country as communications links were being destroyed by missiles from Russia, who has mounted an invasion against Ukraine.
Mykhailo Fedorov, who is the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine told Musk that while he tried to “colonize Mars–Russia try to occupy Ukraine.” He also said that that while Musk’s rockets landed successfully from space, the civilians in his country were being attacked by Russian rockets.
The official, who is also the minister of digital transformation, continued his post asking Musk to provide the country with Starlink stations and “to address sane Russians to stand.”
On Thursday, monitoring group NetBlocks said that they had tracked network disruptions across Ukraine and that the capital city Kyiv had also been affected with internet disruptions. As missiles continued to pound the country, several services including telecommunications services have been affected and this is where a service like Starlink can make a difference.
Starlink provides internet services to parts of the world that remain unconnected to broadband providers. Most of these areas are generally rural or desolate with large stretches of land making it impractical for broadband providers to lay cables or to provide Wifi internet connectivity.
Starlink uses a network of over 2,000 satellites in low Earth orbit to beam down the internet throughout the world. The service is accessed using a satellite dish that is placed on a person’s property. SpaceX has already put in orbit thousands of satellites as well as ground stations, to connect remote and other regions in the planet. On Friday, Spacex launched 50 new satellites in orbit.
Starlink terminals have helped to restore communications earlier this year in Tonga when there was a massive volcanic eruption and tsunami in January. Musk and SpaceX sent 50 Starlink terminals that provided free internet access to remote villages that had been cut off as a result of the natural disaster. The terminals helped restore communications in these remote areas, according to a report by Reuters.
