City officials announced that SpaceX has chosen Adelanto for a Starlink ground infrastructure facility site to support the company’s next-generation of satellites.
“We continue to strengthen our position as an innovative and business-friendly city that partners with the state to attract cutting edge technologies and institutional players,” said Mayor Gabriel Reyes in a press release. “Such projects will create well-paying jobs and improve the quality of life of our residents.”
City leaders referenced an Federal Communications Commission filing and online article by Data Center Dynamics, which highlights the SpaceX project designed to deliver faster internet speeds from Starlink’s low-orbiting satellite network.
The Adelanto site is part of the SpaceX Starlink plan to expand its ground station infrastructure across the U.S. as the company plans to launch its fleet of second-generation satellites.
Ground stations link the satellites with the internet data centers on the ground, which connect to existing fiber-optic infrastructures2, which link to the world wide web.
Nathan Owens, a CDN Reliability Engineer at Netflix who regularly posts about Starlink news, said in December, 2022, that SpaceX filed with the FCC to build or upgrade around 21 U.S. gateway sites with E-band capabilities that will provide greater uplink and downlink speeds.
Owens took to Twitter to post a satellite photo and to say that he found in Adelanto “both an 8 gateway enclouse and a 32 gateway enclosure. Some of these sites might have 40 antennas!”
The “Los Angeles Gateway Earth Station” facility is located west of Highway 395 and near El Mirage Road, and includes eight antennas, which are each 5-feet in diameter,