Falcon 9 took off from the 39th launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida around 6 a.m., SpaceX said on Twitter.
The first phase booster supporting the mission completed eight flights before this launch.
‘Falcon 9’s first shift landed on the natural droneship of Course I Still Love You and completed the ninth flight of the booster,’ SpaceX tweeted.
The Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket that is 70 meters or 229 feet long, according to the information provided during the launch of the launch. It is described by SpaceX as the ‘first rocket-class rocket that can fly.’
The 60 Starlink satellites were deployed about an hour after the rocket was launched.
Starlink is a satellite-based Internet constellation designed to cover the planet in high-speed broadband, and is often touted as a way to connect the billions of people who still do not have reliable Internet access.
The idea requires swarms of satellites to work in a low-Earth orbit – in the case of SpaceX – about 340 kilometers high – to provide continuous coverage.
About 1,000 Starlink satellites have been deployed and SpaceX plans to grow Starlink to more than 40,000 satellites. This is five times the total number of satellites that humans have launched since the advent of space travel.
SpaceX now owns about one-third of all active satellites in space.