Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) equipped a ship with SpaceX Starlink user terminals, according to a person who went on a cruise trip in November 2022. They shared photographs via Reddit of a NCL ship called ‘Breakaway’ which is equipped with 11 Starlink antennas that will provide internet to passengers, pictured below. “On a Norwegian Breakaway cruise and spotted 11 Starlink dishes. Eight here on the top sundeck and three more behind me,” they shared.
Photo Source: Reddit u/Asleep_Operation2790
A month later, another traveler who went on NCL’s ‘Ocean Riviera’ cruise ship meeting shared on the Cruise Critic blog in January that they talked to an employee that works with NCL’s internet department who said that the cruise line signed an agreement with SpaceX to install Starlink on its entire fleet of ships before the end of the year. However, the company has not yet released an official press release to confirm this. Norwegian operates a fleet of 26 large cruise ships, it is the fourth-largest in the world by passengers.
Starlink became available in Norway in mid-November, soon after SpaceX launched a fleet of satellites into orbits that serve the Arctic region. The satellite constellation already transmits internet service to countries located in high latitudes, including: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Canada, and the U.S. state of Alaska. Some of this regions receive a lot of heavy snow, making it difficult for telecommunication companies to build terrestrial fiber-optic cable internet infrastructures across snowy mountainous regions. SpaceX’s Starlink hardware is ideal for these areas because the phased array antenna user terminal is around the size of a pizza box and easy to set-up. The antenna features advanced technology that auto-adjusts to find an ideal view of the satellites in orbit. Visit SpaceX’s official website Starlink.com for more information.
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About the Author
Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo
Evelyn J. Arevalo joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover news as a Space Journalist and SpaceX Starbase Texas Correspondent. Evelyn is specialized in rocketry and space exploration. The main topics she covers are SpaceX and NASA.
