Facebook will launch its first Athena satellite in 2019

Facebook, which has more than two billion users, is facing a major problem: how to continue to recruit when the people we want to reach do not have internet?

The solution to this puzzle is simple: we must offer these future users access to the Internet, if possible reliable and fast. Facebook had started working on drones (the Aquila project) that would have provided internet access in remote areas. But the social network has finally decided to aim much higher.

Internet access ... and Facebook
Facebook has confirmed Wired's information on another, more ambitious project: in the course of next year, the company will launch a satellite that will aim to connect private areas of the internet. Called Athena, this satellite will turn around the planet in a low orbit, and its mission will be "limited" in duration.

It is therefore very likely that this is, as a first step, to test the relevance and effectiveness of such a solution. Before, no doubt, to work twice as hard on a larger space program. The low orbit targeted by Facebook suggests that the group intends to create a "cloud" of hundreds or even thousands of satellites gravitating around the Earth to provide the most complete coverage of the globe.

Facebook is not the only company interested in Internet access satellites. SpaceX has already sent two spacecraft, which could eventually be joined by hundreds of others as part of the Starlink project.