A team of specialists from Elon Musk's SpaceX has arrived in the Fiji Islands to install the company's Starlink Gateway station for providing Internet access to Oceania's Tonga that suffered a major volcanic eruption in mid-January, Fiji authorities said on Monday.
Starlink is a next-generation satellite network for providing broadband Internet access across the world. The project was launched by SpaceX in February 2018. Since then, nearly 2,000 satellites have been put into orbit with a total of 12,000 devices projected to be deployed in the future.
"The Hunga Tonga volcano's shockwave shattered Tonga's internet connection, adding days of gut-wrenching uncertainty to disaster assessments. A @SpaceX team is now in Fiji establishing a Starlink Gateway station to reconnect Tonga to the world," Fijian Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said on Twitter.
Sayed-Khaiyum expressed gratitude to Musk for "the great initiative."
The disruption of communication lines in Tonga was caused by the impairment of the islands’ major undersea cable as a result of a powerful underwater volcanic eruption that occurred beneath the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai islands on January 15. The eruption, considered the world's strongest in the past 30 years, caused a severe tsunami and covered the islands with a thick layer of volcanic ash.
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