SpaceX launched more than forty new Starlink internet satellites into orbit before dawn Friday on the 12th flight of its Falcon 9 rocket.
the two stages Falcon 9 Topped the rocket with 53 rockets from SpaceX starlink Internet satellites lit up the pre-dawn sky over Florida as they lifted off from Pad 39A from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday at 5:42 a.m. EDT (0942 GMT).
The mission marked the twelfth launch of the first stage of the Falcon 9, tying the company’s reuse record. SpaceX has flown three different Falcon 9 boosters 12 times so far.
The launch vehicle is likely to fly again on Friday SpaceX She successfully landed the booster on her drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was stationed off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean. This was SpaceX’s 111th successful landing.
Related: Starlink megaconstellation from SpaceX is launched in pictures
starlink SpaceX is the huge and growing constellation of broadband satellites. The company launched More than 2,400 Starlink spacecraft So far, many of them this year; 10 of SpaceX’s 18 launches in 2022 were dedicated Starlink missions.
Friday’s launch marks the 45th Starlink mission since launches began in 2019, SpaceX sales director Ian McCullough said during a live launch commentary.
There will be more such trips to come. The next generation version of Starlink – which already offers internet service to a variety of locations around the world – could consist of Up to 30,000 satellitesaccording to paperwork provided by SpaceX.
As the Falcon 9 launch tally shows, 2022 was indeed a big year for SpaceX. The past month has been particularly busy; The company launched six missions in April, including Ax mission 1the first fully private crewed flight to the International Space Station, and Crew-4, the latest flight by SpaceX astronauts to NASA’s orbiting laboratory.
“With reuse enabling the increased release cadence, we were able to support an average of one launch per week,” McCullough said during Friday’s launch. In April alone, we had a total of six launches, including two human spaceflights with the Ax-1 and Crew-4.”
The Ax-1 returned to Earth after 15 days of stay aboard the station, but Crew-4, which was launched on April 27It will be there for about six months — about the same as the Crew-3, which was launched in November 2021 and Littered off the coast of Florida early Friday.
“We don’t see any signs of slowing down anytime soon,” McCullough said. “In the past twelve months, we have added more than 40 commercial missions to our manifesto, which will be launched in the next two years.”
Mike Wall is the author of “AbroadBook (Great Grand Publishing House, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrials. Follow him on Twitter Tweet embed. Follow us on Twitter Tweet embed or on Facebook.