Some big names in business have lowered their sights when it comes to establishing space businesses—Low Earth Orbit (LEO), that is. For example, Elon Musk’s Space X program has already launched 60 LEO satellites, with a suggested goal of as many as 12,000 that Musk calls Starlink. Not to be outdone, Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, has plans to send several similar satellites into the orbit just above the earth’s atmosphere. And there are others.
The objective is a space network of small communications satellites that could speed and expand Internet communications. According to Musk, “Starlink, not the SpaceX cargo runs, are how the company will bankroll his ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars.”
The advantage of LEO satellites is that they speed up the transmission time to and from Earth. Higher geostationary satellites have a latency—the time it takes a signal to go from Earth and back—on the order of 600 milliseconds, while LEO satellites can cut that time to just 60 milliseconds