A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up the nightfall sky over southern California on Sunday (Sept. 28) because it carried a brand new stack of 28 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.
The night launch at 10:04 p.m. EDT (0204 GMT on Sept. 29 or 7:04 p.m. PDT native time) from Vandenberg Area Pressure Base efficiently reached house in slightly below minutes. The Falcon’s higher stage booster was on observe to deploy the broadband web relays (Starlink Group 11-20) about an hour after leaving the bottom.
The Falcon’s first stage (Booster 1063), in the meantime, descended to a propulsive touchdown on its 4 deployed touchdown legs on “Of Course I Still Love You,” a droneship positioned in the Pacific Ocean. This was the 28th flight for this particular stage.
The launch added 28 Starlink satellites to SpaceX’s megaconstellation, which now totals more than 8,500 active units.
The flight was SpaceX’s 124th Falcon 9 mission this yr out of a complete 542 launches since 2010.
