KATHMANDU, MAY 9
If everything goes as planned, American billionaire Elon Musk will virtually stand atop Mt Everest summit later this month.
Musk, owner of Tesla Inc, SpaceX and Twitter, has sent his representatives to attempt to scale Mt Everest from where the team will video chat providing real-time summit experience to the world's second-richest billionaire.
"Tyler Carnevale, product head of the Starlink Network Engineering team at SpaceX, along with a support staff is now at the Everest base camp to attempt to scale Mt Everest in a couple of weeks," Mingma David Sherpa, co-owner of Elite Exped, said.
As per the plan, Carnevale has brought the Starlink device to test live streams from the roof of the world. "Carnevale and team will hold a live video chat with Musk from the summit point while testing Starlink's highspeed, low-latency service providing satellite device," a source at the base camp confirmed. Depending on the weather window, climbers plan to start their summit push from the third week of May.
Gaurav Giri, joint-secretary at the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, confirmed that Starlink had applied for a permit to test live streams from Mt Everest. "Its application is now jointly being reviewed by Nepal Telecommunication Authority and the Department of Information and Broadcasting," Giri said, adding that they couldn't test their device without permit from the concerned authorities. Sherpa claimed government officials were positive about issuing a permit to conduct Starlink test transmission at the earliest. It seems Starlink wants to expand its market in Nepal.
In recent years, Musk has assigned Carnevale to test live streams from the most remote locations in the world. The youngest person to row the Arctic Ocean Open Waters north to south, Carnevale has already successfully tested the satellite device in Antarctica. According to SpaceX, Starlink is the world's first and largest satellite constellation using a low Earth orbit to deliver broadband internet capable of supporting streaming, online gaming, and video calls.
Renowned climber Nirmal 'Nims' Purja from Elite Exped is leading an expedition for Carnevale's team to Everest and Lhotse this season. Carnevale also holds eight Guinness World Records. In 2017, he became the youngest person to row across the Arctic Ocean. His team reached the northernmost latitude reached by a rowing vessel, was the first to row across the Arctic Ocean North to South and was first to row across the Greenland Sea. In 2019, Carnevale became a finisher of the 34th Marathon des Sables, the toughest footrace on earth.
"Testing a high-speed internet device on Everest summit is a welcome step," Shiva Bahadur Sapkota, general secretary, Everest Summiteers Association said. This would revolutionize the country's satellite technology sector and help end syndication in the Everest region. Now, Everest Link and Nepal Link are providing costly internet services up to the base camp, Sapkota said, adding it would also end a monopoly on internet access at the foot of the world's highest point.
Though the specific technological details of the Starlink device being used in the Everest summit have not been disclosed yet, Starlink is a constellation of thousands of satellites that orbit the planet much closer to Earth, at about 550km, and cover the entire globe. Because Starlink satellites are in low orbit, latency is significantly lower - around 25 ms vs 600+ ms, according to SpaceX.
A version of this article appears in the print on May 10, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
