The Federal Aviation Administration has began testing using SpaceX Starlink satellite tv for pc web terminals within the nationwide airspace system, almost two years after Verizon was awarded a $2 billion contract to carry out comparable work.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk claimed on his social media platform X that the Verizon system “just isn’t working and so is placing air vacationers at severe threat.”
A spokesperson for Verizon didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The information, first reported by Bloomberg, comes only a few weeks after new U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated Musk and his so-called “Division of Authorities Effectivity” have been going to assist “improve” the air site visitors management system.
The FAA defined in a press release Monday that Alaska has lengthy had points with dependable climate info for the aviation neighborhood.
“The 2024 FAA Reauthorization required the FAA to repair telecommunications connections to handle these wants,” the assertion posted on X reads. “That’s the reason the FAA has been contemplating using Starlink for the reason that prior administration to extend reliability at distant websites, together with in Alaska.”
The company additionally confirmed it’s testing one terminal at its facility in Atlantic Metropolis and two terminals at non-safety vital websites in Alaska.
Musk has spent the final month hacking away on the inside workings of the federal authorities with assist from a cadre of staff, a lot of whom come from his ecosystem of corporations, together with SpaceX and Tesla. The employees at DOGE have gained entry to a number of federal businesses that regulate Musk’s corporations, and a few that — so far as we all know — are nonetheless performing ongoing investigations into these companies.
President Donald Trump has claimed Musk will self-police any conflicts of curiosity, which means no company or individual is evaluating whether or not the world’s richest man is personally benefitting from this entry and energy.