SpaceX Launches Fifth Batch of Starlink Satellites

Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its fifth batch of 60 Starlink satellites Monday morning, another step toward Musk’s vision of creating a space-based network to provide broadband internet service around the world.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rumbled aloft from Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida at roughly 10:05 a.m. local time and the satellites were successfully deployed. The rocket’s first stage appeared to narrowly miss landing on an uncrewed drone-ship in the Atlantic Ocean, Bloomberg reported.
Gywnne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, said earlier this month that SpaceX will likely spin out Starlink and sell shares to the public.
SpaceX is one of a handful of players that wants to build out a space-based internet system that can serve people who struggle to access the web today via fiber optic and cellular connections. 
Starlink would beam down relatively high-speed data from its network of satellites orbiting the Earth. It is targeting service in the northern US and Canada this year.
Such a service would effectively make SpaceX a telecommunications company that also has a rocket launch business.
SpaceX has been launching roughly 60 satellites at a time into orbit and with a few more should have global coverage. The service will be “less than what you are paying now for about five to 10 times the speed you are getting”, Shotwell said earlier this month at a private investor event hosted by JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Miami.
SpaceX has come to dominate the commercial rocket industry, with customers that include NASA, the US military and commercial satellite operators.
Starlink and its ability to provide high-speed internet across the globe has helped private investors in SpaceX justify a roughly $33 billion valuation. Musk has long maintained that SpaceX itself is unlikely to go public until it is regularly ferrying people to Mars.