SpaceX added but extra satellites to its ever-growing Starlink web megaconstellation on Monday night time (Nov. 27).
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Area Power Station on Monday at 11:20 p.m. EST (0420 GMT on Nov. 28).
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The Falcon 9’s first stage got here again to Earth for a vertical touchdown about 8.5 minutes after launch. It touched down on the droneship “Simply Learn the Directions,” which was stationed within the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
It was the seventeenth launch and touchdown for this explicit booster, in accordance with a SpaceX mission description.
The 23 Starlink satellites, in the meantime, had been scheduled to deploy from the Falcon 9’s higher stage into low Earth orbit (LEO) about 65.5 minutes after liftoff.
The Starlink community, which beams web service right down to individuals world wide, already options greater than 5,000 operational spacecraft, in accordance with astrophysicist and satellite tv for pc tracker Jonathan McDowell.
However that quantity retains rising, and sure will far into the long run. SpaceX already has permission to deploy 12,000 Starlink craft into LEO, and it has utilized for approval for an additional 30,000 on high of that.
