A chain of 60 satellites visible from New Zealand this morning are the first step in a plan from Elon Musk to provide cheap, high-speed internet to the world.

Photo: AFP / HO/ Marco Langbroek, Leiden, the Netherlands

Entrepreneur Elon Musk's firm, SpaceX, launched 60 internet satellites late last month, part of what aims to eventually be 12,000 spacecraft in its 'Starlink' network to provide affordable, high-speed internet.

Mr Musk said there was "a fundamental goodness" to giving people in all corners of the globe choices in broadband internet service. He said he was especially interested in reaching areas without coverage or where it was expensive or unreliable.

Ian Griffin told First Up the chain of satellites would have been most visible from the south of New Zealand at about 7.20am today.

"The satellites will be slowly passing pretty much overhead, and they should be visible, hopefully, as relatively dim stars moving across the sky.

There are just 2000 operational satellites in orbit today, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists' database.

Falcon 9 launches 60 Starlink satellites to orbit – targeting up to 6 Starlink launches this year and will accelerate our cadence next year to put ~720 satellites in orbit for continuous coverage of most populated areas on Earth pic.twitter.com/HF8bCI4JQD — SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 24, 2019

RNZ / AP / BBC