Enlarge / At left, a glow can be seen on the horizon just as a Falcon 9 rocket was due to land. (credit: SpaceX webcast)

A Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday night carrying its payload of 60 Starlink satellites. After dropping off the second stage in a parking orbit, the first stage reentered Earth's atmosphere for a rendezvous with a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Alas, the rocket never made it to the boat. The company's launch webcast included a video from the drone ship, Of Course I Still Love You , and a distant glow could be seen on the horizon when the rocket was due to land.

"We did get a little bright glow... no longer see a flame there... it does look like we did not land our booster," said launch commentator Jessica Anderson, a manufacturing engineer at SpaceX. "It is unfortunate that we did not recover this booster, but our second stage is still on a nominal trajectory."

Enlarge / A stack of 60 Starlink satellites launched in 2019. (credit: SpaceX )

A new SpaceX filing outlines plans for Starlink to offer phone service, emergency backup for voice calls, and cheaper plans for people with low incomes through the government's Lifeline program.

The details are in Starlink's petition to the Federal Communications Commission for designation as an Eligible Telecommunications Carrier (ETC) under the Communications Act. SpaceX said it needs that legal designation in some of the states where it won government funding to deploy broadband in unserved areas. The ETC designation is also needed to get reimbursement from the FCC's Lifeline program for offering discounts on telecom service to people with low incomes.

Starlink is in beta and costs $99 per month, plus a one-time fee of $499 for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router. As we noted yesterday , the SpaceX filing also says Starlink now has over 10,000 users in the US and abroad. SpaceX should have capacity for several million customers in the US—the company has permission to deploy up to 1 million user terminals (i.e. satellite dishes) and is seeking FCC permission to raise the maximum-deployment level to 5 million user terminals.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Starlink user terminal/satellite dish. (credit: SpaceX )

Lobby groups for small ISPs are urging the Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether SpaceX can deliver on its broadband promises and to consider blocking the satellite provider's rural-broadband funding. Meanwhile, SpaceX says the Starlink beta is now serving high-speed broadband to 10,000 users.

SpaceX was one of the biggest winners in the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), winning $885.51 million over 10 years to bring Starlink broadband to 642,925 homes and businesses in 35 states. Overall, the reverse auction awarded $9.2 billion ($920 million per year) in funding for 180 entities nationwide to expand networks to 5.2 million homes and businesses that currently don't have access to modern broadband speeds.

But funding winners still have to submit " long-form applications " by January 29 to provide "additional information about qualifications, funding, and the network that they intend to use to meet their obligations." The FCC will review those applications to determine whether any funding should be revoked.

Enlarge / Starlink logo imposed on stylized image of the Earth. (credit: Starlink )

SpaceX has begun launching Starlink satellites with laser links that will help provide broadband coverage in polar regions. As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter on Sunday , these satellites "have laser links between the satellites, so no ground stations are needed over the poles."

Starlink satellites prior to launch. The black circles in the middle are laser links. (credit: SpaceX )

"All sats launched next year will have laser links," Musk wrote in another tweet yesterday , indicating that the laser systems will become standard on Starlink satellites in 2022. For now, SpaceX is only including laser links on polar satellites. "Only our polar sats have lasers this year & are v0.9," Musk wrote.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches five dozen Starlink satellites on August 18, 2020. (credit: SpaceX)

Russia's legislative body, the State Duma, is considering fines for individuals and companies in the country that use Western-based satellite Internet services. The proposed law seeks to prevent accessing the Internet by means of SpaceX's Starlink service, OneWeb, or other non-Russian satellite constellations under development.

According to a recent report in the Russian edition of Popular Mechanics, the recommended fines range from 10,000 to 30,000 rubles ($135-$405) for ordinary users, and from 500,000 to 1 million rubles ($6,750 to $13,500) for legal entities who use the Western satellite services.

In the Russian-language article, translated for Ars by Robinson Mitchell, members of the Duma assert that accessing the Internet independently would bypass the country's System of Operational Search Measures, which monitors Internet use and mobile communications. As part of the country's tight control on media and communications, all Russian Internet traffic must pass through a Russian communications provider.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Starlink user terminal/satellite dish. (credit: SpaceX )

SpaceX has begun sending email invitations to Starlink's public beta and will charge beta users $99 per month plus a one-time fee of $499 for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router. The emails are being sent to people who previously registered interest in the service on the Starlink website . One person in Washington state who got the email posted it on Reddit . Another person who lives in Wisconsin got the Starlink public-beta invitation and passed the details along to Ars via email.

SpaceX is calling it the "Better Than Nothing" beta, perhaps partly because the Starlink satellite service will be most useful to people who cannot get cable or fiber broadband. But the email also says, "As you can tell from the title, we are trying to lower your initial expectations."

The rest of the email reads as follows:

Enlarge (credit: SpaceX )

SpaceX has agreed to provide Internet service to 45 families in a Texas school district in early 2021 and to an additional 90 families later on, the school district announced last week . The announcement by Ector County Independent School District (ECISD) in Odessa said it will be the "first school district to utilize SpaceX satellites to provide Internet for students."

"The project will initially provide free Internet service to 45 families in the Pleasant Farms area of south Ector County," the district said. "As the network capabilities continue to grow, it will expand to serve an additional 90 Ector County families."

The Texas location is notable because the ongoing, limited Starlink beta exists only in the Northern US, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said an upcoming public beta will only be for the North and "hopefully" southern Canada. SpaceX has over 700 Starlink satellites in orbit, and will be able to expand the service area as it deploys more of the nearly 12,000 it has been authorized to launch. In Washington State, Starlink has been deployed to rural homes, a remote tribe , and emergency responders and families in wildfire-stricken areas .