SpaceX on Wednesday launched another 60 Starlink satellites in a sunny sky over the Space Coast in Florida, adding more capacity and coverage to the company’s commercial broadband network, while setting new records for the pace at which Falcon 9 rocket amplifiers herbenut.
The two-phase launcher fired its nine Merlin 1D main engines and climbed away from the 39A road at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday at 08:02 EST (1302 GMT). The rocket’s guidance system sent the 229-foot-long (70-meter) launcher to the northeast across the Atlantic on a trajectory to place the 60 Starlink relief stations in an orbit ranging between 53 degrees north and south latitude.
The first stage booster – designated as B1051 – made its eighth voyage to space and back on Wednesday’s mission, making it SpaceX’s fleet leader. The first phase is closed and separated from the second phase of the Falcon 9, about two and a half minutes in flight, extending aerodynamic grille fins and sailing briefly into space before re-entering the atmosphere and a propulsive landing on SpaceX’s floating repair barrel nail in the Atlantic Ocean.
The brave 15-story shelf bravely descends to the landing pad, or drone, expands its four-legged landing gear and shoots the center engine in a final brake maneuver just before touching. According to Jessica Anderson, a SpaceX engineer, the wind in the landing was stronger than previous rocket landings, but SpaceX chose to continue the mission in hopes of collecting data on the booster’s ability to move in less ideal conditions to land. presented the launch of the company on Wednesday.
The video of the drone crashed when the rocket hit about eight minutes after the ramp, but the live video resumed quickly and showed the scorched, soot-covered booster safely on the landing platform.
“We landed the Falcon 9 for the eighth time,” Anderson said. “This is our life leader. What a wonderful morning! ‘
Here’s a repeat of the Falcon 9 rocket’s spectacular explosion of the Kennedy Space Center a few minutes ago with 60 Starlink satellites.
Continued coverage: https://t.co/EUVptgsLi8 pic.twitter.com/sP1W64xD7u
– Space Fly Now (@SpaceflightNow) 20 January 2021
The cheerleader at Wednesday’s launch first flew on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-1 mission in March 2019, when the man-rated spaceship took off on an unflying test flight to the International Space Station and paved the way. for space missions in 2020.
The first phase was re-launched in California in June 2019 carrying the three Radarsat Constellation Mission remote sensing satellites in Canada and flying on four Starlink missions from Cape Canaveral. Recently, the booster launched on December 13 with the SXM 7 radio broadcast satellite for SiriusXM.
The SXM 7 launch took place 38 days before Wednesday’s mission, which was the fastest turnaround between flights since SpaceX began reusing Falcon 9 boosters in 2017.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, said that the latest version of the Falcon 9 booster – called the Block 5 – can fly ten times without any major overhaul, and maybe 100 times with regular overhauls. With as many as 48 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flights scheduled for 2021, it looks like SpaceX is poised to have at least one Falcon booster, and possibly more, to reach the milestone for ten flights this year.
The two halves of the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload screen on Wednesday were also recovered from previous missions. Two SpaceX recovery vessels, each with giant nets to catch the casings while falling under parachutes, were in the Atlantic on Wednesday to retrieve the components.
The cargo was detonated moments after the ignition of the Falcon 9’s second phase engine when the rocket rose above the atmosphere, revealing the stack of 60 Starlink satellites mounted in front of the rocket.
After reaching a provisional parking lane, the Falcon 9 top stage crossed halfway around the world, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Europe and the Middle East before briefly relocating its engine across the Indian Ocean to deliver the Starlink payloads. put in the right lane for deployment.
The 60 satellites released a little over an hour into the mission of the rocket. An on-board camera showed the flat-screen satellites, built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, flying away from the second phase of Falcon 9.
With the 60 new satellites, SpaceX has so far shot 1,015 Starlink spacecraft into orbit, including prototypes not intended for commercial service. The new satellites will give SpaceX a fleet of about 950 Starlinks that are currently in orbit, after the missing satellites have been pulled down, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who is global space activity follows.
These are more satellites than any other company or government entity.
The fresh satellites will unfold solar panels, run through automatic pay points and activate krypton ion slides to increase their orbits to join the rest of the Starlink constellation at an altitude of 550 kilometers.
SpaceX plans to operate an initial block of about 1,500 Starlink satellites. The company, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has been approved by the Federal Communications Commission to eventually deploy a fleet of up to 12,000 small Starlink broadband stations in Ku-band, Ka-band and V-band frequencies.
SpaceX says the Starlink network – designed for low-latency Internet services – has entered a beta testing phase in several US states and Canada using its already launched satellites. The test recently extended to the UK, SpaceX said on Wednesday and the US military also tested the Starlink internet service.
There are also preliminary plans for an even larger fleet of 30,000 extra Starlink satellites, but a network of this size has not been approved by the FCC.
Deployment of Starlink confirmed! SpaceX has now launched 1,015 Starlink Internet satellites, including missing spacecraft and missing prototypes. Https://t.co/EUVptgsLi8 pic.twitter.com/2bvBRbesIm
– Space Fly Now (@SpaceflightNow) 20 January 2021
Wednesday’s mission was SpaceX’s second launch of the year. Two more Falcon 9 flights are scheduled for the end of January.
A Falcon 9 rocket will be lifted from Route 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Station during a one-hour window opening at 9:24 AM EST (1424 GMT), transporting more than 100 small satellites for the U.S. government, commercial operators on Friday , and foreign customers.
The ride-sharing mission will deliver the satellites in a polar-sun-synchronous orbit, more than 500 kilometers, above the earth. This will be the second launch by SpaceX from Cape Canaveral aimed at a polar orbit, using a southern launch corridor flared by a Falcon 9 flight in August with the SAOCOM 1B radar observation satellite.
Another Falcon 9 mission is tentatively scheduled to take off from Florida space on the morning of January 27 with another group of about 60 Starlink satellites, according to the publicly available danger zone notice setting out foreign conservation zones for the launch.
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