WASHINGTON – A SpaceX Falcon 9 has launched a new set of Starlink satellites and landed the booster on March 4, two and a half weeks after the landing failed during the previous launch.
The Falcon 9 disembarked east of Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 3:24 p.m. The rocket put its payload of 60 Starlink satellites into orbit about 65 minutes after takeoff.
The first shift of Falcon 9 landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean eight and a half minutes after launch. The booster was on its eighth flight after launching the Telesat 18 Vantage communications satellite, the last group of Iridium satellites and five sets of Starlink satellites.
The landing attempt was of particular importance because the previous Falcon 9 launch on February 15 failed to land the booster, which broke a streak of two dozen successful landings. A SpaceX official revealed on March 1 that hot gas penetrated a small hole in a lid that surrounded one of the nine Merlin engines of the stage, causing the engine to go off during takeoff. While the car was able to pull the car out, the mission could continue, but the failed engine meant the stage did not have enough pressure to land.
This latest launch seems to be proceeding normally, though SpaceX did not provide videos of cameras installed on the first stage at the start of last week. The company did not explain the missing video in its webcast of the launch, but the lack of video of the rocket itself, combined with a low cloud cover, meant that viewers on the webcast only saw a dark screen for the most of the first phase’s flight. .
The launch brings the total number of Starlink satellites to 1,205, though more than 60 of them have been missing since then. This includes three satellites at two launches in October that could not increase their orbits after deployment, causing them to re-enter within a few weeks of launch.
SpaceX said in a February 22 submission to the Federal Communications Commission that 720 of the last 723 satellites launched were ‘maneuverable above the injection height’, but did not confirm that the three were the October launches.
SpaceX said it had identified and rectified ‘the cause of the few satellites that were non-maneuverable above the injection height’, including better testing of the satellites in the factory and updated software to other Starlink satellites in orbit . “These early cases have not occurred since the software updates were implemented, which means that SpaceX’s fixes not only address new and future satellites, but also the protection of satellites in orbit,” the company said in its FCC submission said.
The filing was part of a dossier at SpaceX’s request to amend its FCC license so that it could move satellites to lower orbits. Several other satellite operators are against the request, mainly over concerns that the modified constellation will interfere with their systems. SpaceX again rejected these claims and the FCC did not indicate when it would rule on SpaceX’s request.