Byron Tau and Bernard Condon
WASHINGTON (AP) – The satellite company owned by Elon Musk has an internal orbit that could take over a large federal contract to modernize the country’s air traffic communications system.
Musk’s Starlink equipment is being installed at the Federal Aviation Management Facility as a prelude to the acquisition of the $2 billion contract held by Verizon, according to government employees, contractors and those familiar with the work. .
Musk said the network used by air traffic controllers is aging and requires dramatic and rapid action to modernize it.
“The Verizon system is not working, putting air travelers at serious risk,” Musk posted on X, a social media site that it owns since 2022.
The emergence of Starlink as a potential alternative to Verizon-led efforts is the extraordinary profits inherent in Musk’s position, both as a senior White House advisor to President Donald Trump and a business mogul in charge of vast corporations. It emphasizes conflict. It is not clear what role masks play in helping Starlink’s parent company SpaceX win such businesses.
“There’s very little transparency,” said Jessica Teepman, a contract law expert at George Washington University. Referring to Musk, she states: “Without that transparency, we don’t know how much public information he has access to or what role he plays in the contracts that the contract is awarded.”
Former FAA officials also said the Associated Press is wary of the possibility that Starlink could be used as an important part of the country’s aviation system, without proper testing, review or discussion about its advantages and disadvantages. He spoke.
SpaceX is fishing to use satellite constellations to replace the aging, ground-based communications system that promotes text and voice communication in the FAA, sources said. The Verizon contract awarded in 2023 was to update some of its systems to a more modern standard that relies on fiber optic cables.
Nearly $200 million has already been done in Verizon’s 15-year modernization efforts to update the FAA’s communications system, contract records show. A representative of Verizon said the company does not know that the contract has been amended or terminated.
On X on Monday, the FAA announced that the agency is testing the Starlink terminal at its Atlantic City facility and testing two terminals at “unsafe critical sites” in Alaska. Terminals are ground-based receivers that connect to satellites orbiting devices or computers.
Another FAA contractor, L3 Harris, has confirmed that he is in charge of obtaining and testing the StarLink terminal for incorporation into the FAA’s communications infrastructure network. A spokesman for L3 Harris said the company has been working with SpaceX for months.
Bloomberg News previously reported on the FAA installing Starlink terminals at its facilities.
Details about SpaceX employees have been deployed to tackle the project, but three software developers have been given an “ethics exemption” to do work that could benefit the mask company. The government’s workers have appeared on the Trump administration list.
Under government ethics law, people who can benefit from government work either reject themselves from a particular project, sell their financial holdings first, or make a relationship with a company that can benefit from it. It demands that it be cut off. Exemptions can be granted by the head of government departments or other officials, but only in limited circumstances.
Ted Malaska, senior director of application software at SpaceX, received the exemption along with two software engineers, Brady Glantz and Thomas Kiernan, following the waiver list and LinkedIn profile. The AP couldn’t tell if the three were still working for SpaceX or the exact nature of federal work.
Malaska posted on social media on Thursday that she had met at FAA headquarters with the officials responsible for implementing communications modernization.
The FAA contract is not Musk’s only dispute. His Acolite also takes over many of the business of the General Services Bureau, which manages real estate and contracts for many government agencies. GSA currently offers other agencies the ability to initiate payloads through existing SpaceX agreements. The Ministry of Transport regulates aspects of SpaceX and his electric vehicle company Tesla. NASA and the Department of Defense are SpaceX’s major customers. His brain computer interface company Neuralink has a regulatory problem in front of the US Food and Drug Administration.
Associated writer Kimberly Kindy contributed from Washington.
Original issue: February 25th, 2025, 6:46pm EST
