X owner Elon Musk (AP/Charles Sykes)
Tesla founder provides satellite-based internet for Ukraine, although connectivity hasn’t been interrupted by Russian invasion.
By World Israel News Staff
Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk formally acknowledged that he had sent devices that would facilitate internet access via his company’s Starlink satellite-based internet to Ukraine in a tweet on Monday.
Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation for Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, posted an image on Twitter which appeared to show connective devices in the back of a military truck which would allow Ukranians to use Starlink.
“Starlink — here. Thanks, @elonmusk,” Fedorov wrote.
“You are most welcome,” Musk replied to Fedorov.
Musk has remained mum on details as to how the devices entered Ukraine but acknowledged his surprise that Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, could make an impact during the crisis.
“I wish I could say more,” Musk told SpaceNews. “But, yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Strange that SpaceX can do this.”
Currently, internet access is still widely available throughout Ukraine, though Russia’s invasion of the eastern European nation has sparked fears that Moscow could destroy technological infrastructure and cut Ukraine off from the web if they chose to do so.
“We anticipated the disruption of our comms, but [it] didn’t happen,” Volodymyr Usov, former chairman of the Ukrainian State Space Agency and co-founder of Kyiv-based Kurs Orbita, told SpaceNews.
“Thanks to Elon for his support and good outreach,” he added. “Starlink can prove to be useful, especially outside big cities.”
Musk recently provided Starlink connectors to the South Pacific island of Tonga, which recently suffered a devastating volcanic explosion, triggering a tsunami that destroyed its internet infrastructure.
In May 2021, SpaceX launched two private passengers into space, becoming the first private company to do so. Until then, only the American, Chinese, and Russian governments had successfully launched human beings into space.
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