Elon Musk’s promised Starlink terminals have reached Ukraine, according to official

Image: Mykhailo Fedorov

The country's vice prime minister posted an image of a truck full of Starlink user terminals, which he said was sent by the company. Over the weekend, Mykhailo Fedorov asked Musk to give Ukraine Starlink stations. Musk said that the satellite internet service had been activated for the country and that more terminals were on their way. Musk responded to Fedorov's latest message, "You are most welcome."

There are concerns that there could be cyberattacks on critical internet infrastructure, which could make it harder for news to leave the country or for people to contact loved ones. The fears were raised after some partial outages last week.

Source: Twitter

Source: Twitter

Consumers must have a user terminal in order to use the Starlink system. With a clear view of the sky, the dishes can send and receive signals from any active Starlink satellites that are overhead. It's not clear from the photo how many terminals there are.

There is still a lot of equipment on the ground, but most of the infrastructure that powers satellite internet is in space. Fixed ground stations on Earth that are connected to existing fiber-optic cables are needed in order to provide internet access.

There is still a possibility of technical issues or cyberattacks on satellite internet like Starlink.

Starlink is an ambitious internet-from-space initiative that aims to launch tens of thousands of satellites to low Earth orbit to provide broadband internet coverage to the ground below. The company has over 2000 satellites in the air. In January, Musk claimed during a launch livestream that it had 145,000 active users, and in February, he implied that the company has more than 250,000 user terminals in production.

It is not clear how the dishes will be used or distributed now that they have arrived in Ukraine. In a warzone, unimpeded access to the sky is difficult. The locations of the gateways aren't explicitly public info, but internet sleuths have found some, including one in Poland.

Some members of the Starlink subreddit would be willing to wait longer if it could help people in Ukraine. They asked if they could send their personal terminals to the country. It's debatable how practical these goodwill gestures would be, but it's another example of people coming together to support a country.