SpaceX launched a significant number of additional Starlink internet satellites on Thursday morning, before bringing the rocket back to the sea.
After an April 26 aborted launch due to problems with the rocket landing, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying 46 Starlink spacecraft launched from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday at 9:40 a.m. EDT (1340 GMT; 6:40 a.m. local California time). As of April 25, the mission was also postponed.
SpaceX launched a significant number of additional Starlink internet satellites on Thursday morning, before bringing the rocket back to the sea. Vandenberg was covered in thick fog, but the launch went off without a hitch.
About 8.5 minutes after takeoff, the Falcon 9 rocket returned to Earth for a landing on the deck of the SpaceX droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which was stationed off the coast of California.
According to a SpaceX mission description, this was the booster’s thirteenth launch and landing. Even though that quantity is impressive, SpaceX’s record of 15 booster reuse flights is slightly better.
While this was going on, the upper stage of the Falcon 9 kept launching the 46 Starlink spacecraft into low Earth orbit, where they were deployed 59 minutes after launch. SpaceX’s enormous and expanding broadband mega constellation is called Starlink. It has about 4,000 operational satellites right now, but that number could rise to more than 40,000 in the future.
The launch on Thursday marked SpaceX’s 27th mission of the year. A high-profile non-orbital mission was also launched by the company last week. It was the first test flight of a fully stacked Starship, the enormous spacecraft that SpaceX is building to transport people and cargo to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
On the inaugural flight, which departed from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, Starship performed reasonably well. Before encountering a number of issues that forced SpaceX to initiate a self-destruct high in the skies over the Gulf of Mexico, the 394-foot-tall (120 metres) vehicle reached a maximum altitude of 24 miles (39 kilometres).