US court rejects challenges to FCC approval of SpaceX satellites

A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld the decision of the Federal Communications Commission to approve a SpaceX plan to deploy thousands of Starlink satellites to provide space-based broadband internet service.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected a legal challenge from DISH Network and an environmental group composed of amateur astronomers and dark-sky enthusiasts. DISH had argued the FCC did not adequately consider the risk of signal interference with other satellites, while the astronomer group said the FCC had not followed an environmental law in its approval. The court in 2022 rejected a separate challenge to SpaceX’s plan to deploy satellites at a lower Earth orbit than planned.