Sixty more Starlink Internet satellites owned by SpaceX pulled through a moonlit winter sky over Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 launcher early Thursday, while another Falcon 9 stood on another launch pad a few miles away. Has to raise another 60 Starlink cargo loads.
Nine Merlin’s 1D engines flickered and sent a rumble across Florida’s space coast at 1:19 AM EST (0619 GMT) on Thursday. Pull-out clamps were released to launch the 229-foot (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket from Route 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The Falcon 9 guidance system sent the rocket northeast of Cape Canaveral to align with the planned slopes of the Starlink satellites.
After surpassing the speed of sound, the Falcon 9 rose into the rare upper layers of the atmosphere, throwing its first 15-story booster about 15 and a half minutes into flight. An upper-stage engine ignited to continue accelerating in orbit with the 60 Starlink satellites, while the first phase – design B1060 in SpaceX’s reusable rocket inventory – sank to a target landing on SpaceX’s drone “Of course I still love you” nearly 400,630 miles lower in the Atlantic Ocean.
The first phase’s landing was the fifth trip to space and back for this booster, and it broke a record for the fastest turnaround between flights of a SpaceX booster, which reached the previous point of 38 days last month.
Here’s a repeat of the Falcon 9 rocket launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station a few minutes ago.
It was the fourth Falcon 9 launch of the year and the 107th Falcon 9 flight overall since 2010. https://t.co/TyXGKQ00fff pic.twitter.com/7zhgSix4m9
– Space Fly Now (@SpaceflightNow) February 4, 2021
The booster on Thursday’s mission flew with the Turksat 5A communications satellite last January 7, just 27 days ago.
The upper stage of the Falcon 9 reached a preliminary orbit with the 60 Starlink satellites about nine minutes after the reform on Tuesday, and again ordered its car to move for one second in a targeted orbit ranging between 155 and 180 miles. (250 by-291 kilometers) in altitude.
The 60 Starlink satellites deployed from the rocket just over an hour after the ramp as they flew over the Pacific Ocean near New Zealand.
With the new broadband relay stations launched on Thursday, it appears that SpaceX’s Starlink fleet has grown to more than 1,000 active satellites, according to data provided by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. which follows global satellite and launch activities.
In total, the company has so far launched 1,085 satellites, including prototypes and failed spacecraft that are no longer in orbit.
Another 60 Starlink satellites have been mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket and are awaiting the removal of Route 39A, a few miles north of Route 40 in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The launch is a few days based on better weather conditions in the offshore landing area in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX was scheduled to launch both Falcon 9 rockets less than five hours apart on Thursday, but the company said Wednesday afternoon that the mission would be repelled from Route 39A until Friday morning at 5:14 AM EST (1014 GMT) for extra time. for checks before launch. ”
The upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which flew 170 miles above the earth near New Zealand, deployed just 60 more Starlink Internet satellites to join SpaceX’s ever-growing fleet of broadband relay platforms in orbit. https://t.co/TyXGKQ0Tf3 pic.twitter.com/TARFqiuqf6
– Space Fly Now (@SpaceflightNow) February 4, 2021
SpaceX has both its ocean-going rocket landing platforms, or drones, deployed in the Atlantic for the two Starlink missions.
The two missions are the 18th and 19th dedicated Falcon 9 flights for the Starlink network, which SpaceX is providing broadband Internet services around the world. Thursday’s mission was SpaceX’s fourth Falcon 9 launch of the year, and the 107th Falcon 9 flight since 2010.
SpaceX says the Starlink network provides low-latency provisional Internet services to users in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom through a beta testing program. Commercial service will begin after SpaceX has its first network of approximately 1,584 satellites in orbit, including spare parts.
The quarter-tonne Starlink satellites are being built by SpaceX technicians and engineers in Redmond, Washington.
The initial block of Starlink satellites, including the 60 launched on Thursday, fly in orbits tilted 53 degrees to the equator. The new Starlink satellites will unfold their solar panels and activate their automated cryptonion propellers to reach their final positions in the network.
Once in use, they will orbit at an altitude of 341 miles or 550 kilometers to provide broadband coverage over almost the entire populated world.
SpaceX plans to launch more Starlink satellites into a polar orbit to enable global coverage for maritime and aviation customers, including the U.S. military. The company has approval from the regulator to launch approximately 12,000 Starlink satellites.