As per the regulatory filings published Friday, this year SpaceX has raised above $1 billion as it boards on the deployment of its Starlink broadband constellation.
In one round, the launch provider turned satellite operator lifts $486.2 million, said by the company in 24 May filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filings illustrate that still $18.8 million of the shares available between the two rounds after selling all shares. There is a rise of $1.022 billion in total.
At present, SpaceX is building two capital-intensive projects. These are Starlink broadband mega constellation of up to 12,000 satellites and the completely reusable Super Heavy booster with its Starship upper stage.
In 2017 Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO said the plan for funding Starship and Super Heavy then named it as the Big Falcon Rocket. It involved replacing SpaceX’s present Falcon Heavy rockets and Falcon 9 with the latest launch system. Last week Musk said that SpaceX expects that it can also use Starlink revenue for funding the new launched system.
The main subject of discussion within the satellite industry that remained is how SpaceX would fund Starlink. SpaceX’s president and COO Gwynne Shotwell, estimated the previous year the constellation would charge approximately $10 billion.
As per the report of May 19 from Jefferies Financial Group, SpaceX generated $2 billion in launch revenue last year.
Starlink needs approximately 800 satellites to reach “important operational capability,” and about 1,000 satellites to become “financially viable”, said by Musk. He also added that to be successful Starlink doesn’t require 12,000 satellites rather that SpaceX could level the constellation up to that number based on the order. By giving another way to lower the cost of deploying the constellation Musk said, preferably, SpaceX will have Starship and Super Heavy in service “by the time we are somewhere near to 12,000 satellites”.
Furthermore, SpaceX’s recently disclosed rounds pursuing an unusual filing last month that illustrates SpaceX increased just $44 million after contributing to sell $400 million in equity and shares.
