FCC approves 15,000 satellites for SpaceX
October 7, 2026

By Chris Forrester



The FCC has granted SpaceX the authority to launch a 15,000 satellite Direct-To-Device (D2D) satellite constellation. The satellites will operate between 326-335km meaning a far higher burn rate because they would be relatively closer to the Earth and affected by the planet’s thin, but present, atmosphere. This suggests that SpaceX’s longer-term CapEx cycle would be higher when compared to rival AST SpaceMobile.

The FCC award had some limitations despite the FCC stating the permission would increase “competition in the provision of retail wireless services to American consumers.”


The limitations focus on certain frequencies in US overseas territories (the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico) and where spectrum is controlled by Liberty America Ltd.

The FCC also declined to grant SpaceX access to the 2020-2025 Earth to space bands in the US. Various other complaints against the granting which had been examined by the FCC, including from Iridium, Globalstar and Ligado were allowed although their objections were classed as being “moot” because of the decisions by the FCC.

October 6th also saw SpaceX release one of its Space Safety pages, saying it plans to operate up to 100,000 Starlink satellites and up to 1 million Starmind AI satellites to meet the growing demand for broadband and supercomputers. Starlink now has more than 11,000 satellites in orbit today, so the target alone implies roughly a ninefold expansion of the broadband network. The FCC accepted the filing for up to one million satellites back in February although has yet to approve the scheme.

As to the Starmind craft, SpaceX VP Michael Nicolls explained why the satellites will not operate on their own. “We need to operate clusters of satellites in tight formation to get enough coherent compute to run AI models efficiently,” Nicolls said. “A cluster will be 10-ish satellites connected with 10 terabits or so of bandwidth between them, and interconnected to the broader constellation.”