SpaceX Confirms Launch Date For its First Commercial Mission

SpaceX has announced the timeline for its first commercial mission for its Starship and Super Heavy launch system. The mission will happen in the year 2021. Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX's vice president of commercial sales, during an event in Indonesia, said that the company is in talks with potential customers and telecom companies for its first launch, SpaceNews reports.

The launch system is built to ferry crew and resources to the Moon and Mars, and also send satellites into orbit around the Earth. Elon Musk's company intends to supersede its reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launchers with reusable Super Heavy boosters and Starship upper stage.

Previously, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has shared an image of the first batch of internet satellites that will take flight from Cape Canaveral in the coming days. The 60 satellites will be the first deployment for Musk's ambitious Starlink project which will place 12,000 satellites in the Low-Earth orbit (LEO).

The project aims to create a broadband network that will be capable of providing high-speed internet at a low cost. Musk is a series of tweets posted an image of the 60 satellites packed on the nose of the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry them to the Earth's orbit. Musk described it as a "tight fit."

However, this plan faced a lot of skepticism as it would leave a lot of debris in the LEO. In 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was asked to find a solution for this debris along with the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and NASA.

But, now SpaceX has confirmed that it will place the satellite on a lower orbit of around 550km. The private space company also promised that it will also de-orbit satellites within 5-7 years of their EoL date. While the company already has been approved to place 4,425 satellites in an orbit around 1,200km, but that approval will only matter if SpaceX comes up with a viable debris mitigation plan.