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SpaceX is preserving its fast launch cadence going.
The corporate launched one more batch of 23 Starlink internet satellites at 6:56 p.m. ET (2356 GMT) on Monday (March 4) from House Launch Advanced 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Some eight minutes after liftoff, the flight’s booster returned to the planet, touchdown on SpaceX’s droneship dubbed “A Shortfall of Gravitas.” The ship was ready offshore within the Atlantic Ocean.
With the mission lifting off on time, and SpaceX having launched the Transporter-10 rideshare mission at 5:05 p.m. ET on Monday, three Falcon 9 rocket launches occurred in a span of lower than 24 hours. The third owes itself to the corporate’s profitable Crew-8 astronaut mission launch to the Worldwide House Station on Sunday (March 3).
Associated: Watch SpaceX launch 53 satellites on Transporter-10 rideshare mission today (video)
Monday’s Starlink mission marked the thirteenth flight for this specific Falcon 9 first stage booster. The booster beforehand flew on eight different Starlink missions, the CRS-27 resupply mission to the ISS and a lot of non-public launches together with ispace’s Hakuto-R lunar lander mission.
The mission was SpaceX’s twenty first Falcon 9 flight of 2024. It additionally marked 281 profitable Falcon 9 booster landings.
SpaceX has been launching Starlink satellites with growing regularity; earlier than this mission, its most up-to-date launch was on Feb. 29, Leap Day, when one other 23 Starlink satellites made their technique to area from Cape Canaveral House Power Station.
The corporate is constructing an enormous megaconstellation of Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit to supply wi-fi, high-speed web entry internationally, for each basic client utilization in addition to to be used in struggle zones or catastrophe areas.
The corporate at present has over 5,000 working Starlink satellites in orbit and has approval to launch as much as 12,000.
