After Court Win, SpaceX Presses FCC to Clear Second-Gen Starlink Network

SpaceX is using a recent court win to try and convince the FCC to approve the company’s plans for a second-generation Starlink network. 

Last week, a US appeals court rejected lawsuits from Dish Network and Viasat that tried to reverse an FCC order permitting SpaceX to operate 2,814 first-gen Starlink satellites at lower orbits. On Monday, SpaceX sent a letter(Opens in a new window) to the agency, arguing that the ruling shows why the FCC should dismiss concerns Dish and Viasat have about a second-generation Starlink network. 

“In doing so, the court addressed and authoritatively disposed of several arguments that Dish and Viasat have once again raised against SpaceX’s second generation (‘Gen2’) system,” the company wrote in the letter. 

SpaceX says Dish and Viasat have been submitting their own analyses that claim the second-gen Starlink network exceeds certain power flow specifications. However, last week’s court ruling denied a similar analysis from Dish that found Starlink’s 2,814 first-gen Starlink satellites could cause radio interference, even though the FCC’s own findings found the risk was minimal.

“The court specifically rejected Dish’s attempt to substitute its own bespoke EPFD (Equivalent Power Flux Density) analysis in place of the one actually employed by the ITU (International Telecommunications Union),” the letter says. “Accordingly, the Commission must again reject the attempts by Dish and Viasat to replace the ITU-approved EPFD methodology with an approach that yields an outcome they prefer.” 

SpaceX also notes the US appeals court rejected Viasat’s argument that an environmental review of Starlink should have been conducted—including its potential to cause satellite collisions—before the FCC granted permission to lower the orbits of 2,814 satellites. According to the judges, the probability of harm was deemed “much too speculative” because Viasat operates only a single satellite that flies close to SpaceX’s constellation.

Still, Viasat has urged the FCC to conduct a similar environmental review of the second-gen Starlink network, which will span nearly 30,000 satellites. But SpaceX argues that last week’s court ruling shows Viasat has no standing to raise an environmental complaint. 

“The court found, for example, that ‘Viasat’s theory of space-debris collision does not cross the line from speculative to certainly impending,’ and that many of its other alleged harms are economic ‘and thus fall outside the zone of interests protected by NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act),’” SpaceX says.

The company’s letter goes on to note SpaceX has been waiting for over two years for FCC approval for the second-generation Starlink, which promises to improve coverage and speeds for the popular satellite internet service. The second-generation network is also crucial to SpaceX’s plan to use Starlink to supply voice and data to T-Mobile phones located in cellular dead zones. 

However, the second-gen network is facing opposition or reservations from several companies over its sheer size, which will dwarf any other satellite constellation before it. Back in June, Amazon weighed in by saying the FCC should only grant a license to let SpaceX operate a “small subset” of the nearly 30,000 second-generation Starlink satellites.

In response to last week’s ruling from the US appeals court, Viasat told PCMag: “We believe that the Court’s decision is a setback for both space safety and environmental protection. Had the Court forced the FCC to properly grapple with the complicated issues surrounding deployment of mega-constellations in LEO, we believe harmful impacts that otherwise may persist for decades or even centuries to come could have been avoided.”