According to the New York Times, Elon Musk SpaceX's Starlink Starlink satellite dish is not bad at the Internet and is very good at attracting cats.
Customers of SpaceX's broadband Internet company report that their Starlink satellite has a very "cute" problem: it's the ideal cradle for hugging cats.
This is a disturbing trend, and a Canadian Starlink user recently noted on Twitter that he found no less than five cats resting on his star-chain butterfly antenna.
"Starlink worked well until the cat found out that the plate would emit a little heat on a cold day." Nearly half a dozen cats are curled up on snow-white satellite antennas, and the image has so far garnered 190,000 likes on social media platforms.
A Starlink Beta tester provided an investigative response.
"I was checking the satellite dish with a thermal imager and it actually looked like the whole plate, even the back, was hot. So if it's ground mounted, you might [spot] animals under or around it. ”
Another person noted that when activated, the antenna tilts at such an angle that animals, including birds and rodents, cannot nest in it — so there is no inherent risk of small animals disrupting internet service in this way when the satellite is used.
For now, cats are perhaps the least worrying issue for tech billionaire Musk. Last week, after an orbiting satellite of SpaceX nearly collided with the Chinese space station (twice last July and October, during which Chinese astronauts were on missions inside the space station), Chinese officials questioned the Tesla founder and urged Musk to "act responsibly."
SpaceX has launched nearly 2,000 small satellites as part of an effort to establish internet access anywhere on Earth, especially in some remote areas that are still unserved. Currently, about six out of ten people worldwide use the Internet, whether at home, at school, at work or on mobile devices.