Jan 3, 2025 11:11 PM CST 1 minute & 30 seconds read time TL;DR: SpaceX is upgrading its Starship program to test payload deployment, launching new V3 Starlink satellites with significantly increased capacity. The V3 satellites offer a substantial speed and capacity upgrade over the current V2 Mini models, with the 60 new V3 Starlink satellites adding 1Tbps speeds each for a total of 60Tbps per V3 Starlink satellite launch. SpaceX is making some big upgrades to its Starship test flight program, with the next flight to test payload deployment for the first time ever, and will launch new Starlink satellites into space. These new model spacecraft will travel on the same trajectory as the upper stage aka Starship, and will splash down into the Indian Ocean. The new V3 satellites will be the first-ever payload that Starship flies, as SpaceX has been using its Falcon 9 rocket to get Starlink satellites into space, but that changes with this new Starship launch and the next-gen V3 satellites. The new V3 satellites are reportedly much heavier than the current V2 Mini spacecraft, but Starship has an insane amount of payload capacity, making it far easier to strap in 60 x V3 satellites per Starship launch, adding 60Tbps capacity to the Starlink network each time. Each V3 Starlink satellite has 1Tbps of downlink speed, and 160Gbps of upload capacity, which is an upgrade of 10x the downlink speed, and 24x the uplink capacity compared to SpaceX's current-gen V2 Mini satellites.