Following the historic launch of a pair of the European Fee’s Galileo satellites, SpaceX launched one other batch of its personal Starlink high-speed web satellites. The Sunday night Falcon 9 launch marked the twenty ninth devoted launch of Starlink satellites in 2024.
Liftoff of the Starlink 6-54 mission from Area Launch Complicated 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station (CCSFS) occurred at 6:08 p.m. EDT (2208 UTC).
The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, tail quantity B1076 within the SpaceX fleet, launched for a thirteenth time. It beforehand supported the launches of Ovzon 3, Intelsat IS-40e, SpaceX’s twenty sixth Industrial Resupply Providers (CRS-26) flight and 6 Starlink missions.
Slightly greater than eight minutes after liftoff, B1076 landed on the SpaceX droneship, ‘Simply Learn the Directions.’ This was the eightieth touchdown on JRTI and the 301st booster touchdown to this point.
In a social media put up, Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice chairman of launch, famous that the workforce accomplished a five-hour turnaround of JRTI at Port Canaveral between the droneship arriving and its departure again out to assist the Starlink 6-54 mission.
The 23 Starlink satellites add to the 5,874 at present on orbit, in accordance with the numbers tabulated on April 24 by astronomer and skilled orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell. Previous to this launch, 633 Starlink satellites have been launched in 2024.
On Wednesday, SpaceX introduced that the Federated States of Micronesia, an island nation within the Pacific Ocean, east of Australia, was the newest nation to be added to the checklist of countries the place Starlink service is obtainable.
Touchdown burn and landing on the Simply Learn the Directions droneship pic.twitter.com/qbVzhByVZZ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 28, 2024
Dragon departure
The Starlink 6-54 launch comes simply hours after the SpaceX Cargo Dragon undocked from the Worldwide Area Station to start its roughly 36-hour journey to splashdown off the coast of Florida. Undocking occurred at 1:10 p.m. EDT (1710 UTC).
The Tuesday morning splashdown will deliver the CRS-30 mission to a conclusion. It was docked to the ISS for greater than 30 days and can return with greater than 4,000 kilos of science experiments.
The operation can also be one other vital step in direction of the launch of Boeing’s first crewed mission to the orbiting outpost utilizing its Starliner spacecraft.
Earlier than that launch can happen, SpaceX must relocate its Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft from the forward-facing port to the space-facing port of the Concord module. That maneuver is ready to happen on Could 2.
