SpaceX Starlink satellite internet tested in the field in Antarctica - TESLARATI

Instead, users are connected to the internet via space lasers that route their communications to and from ground stations in South America, Australia, New Zealand, and other nearby locales.

Once removed, packaged, and carefully shipped by plane to labs around the world, the data extracted from those ice cores can tell researchers how the Earth has responded in the past to major and minor changes in climate.

Knowing how it has responded and behaved before has helped scientists around the world determine with near certainty that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing average global temperatures to increase at a relatively rapid pace.

Through funding and other means, the government agency is aiding efforts to test the limits of the SpaceX network and discover how it can benefit science (and improve life) in some of the harshest environments on Earth.

Even without any explicit legal requirement, SpaceX has made wide-reaching changes to its satellites and continues to experiment with ways to reduce their brightness to ground observers and limit their impact on astronomy.

Nonetheless, the FCC’s decision to tie SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink Gen2 constellation license with its cooperation with the NSF has given the latter agency a bit more regulatory power than it had before.