About 9 minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth for a vertical landing on the SpaceX A Shortfall of Gravitas drone, in the Atlantic Ocean about a hundred miles off the coast of Florida.
“Good news overall, we are now waiting for the deployment of 46 Starlink satellites which is scheduled to happen about an hour from now,” SpaceX production manager Jessie Anderson said after the launch. SpaceX ended its live web broadcast prior to satellite deployment due to a lack of ground station video links with satellites.
The two halves of the rocket’s nose cone, or payload fairing, also traveled back into space in flight, each flying on a third mission. SpaceX has launched three major Starlink pools this year, two in January and one on February 3.
“Repairs to the fairing and our overall repair process have reduced the impact of treated water landings to an overall fairing recovery rate of 93% over the last 14 missions,” he added.
The first Falcon 9 stage on this flight, called Starlink 4-8, previously launched SpaceX’s Crew Demo-2 flight (the company’s first astronaut flight for NASA in 2020). Then, the Anasis-II satellite mission for South Korea, the CRS-21 space station cargo mission for the NASA rideshare mission Transporter-1 and Transporter-3 and five different Starlink missions.
Spaceflight Now notes SpaceX has launched approximately 2,100 Starlink satellites into orbit, with more than 200 falling from orbit. However, SpaceX still plans to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites and has applied for permits from international regulators for up to 30,000 more.
Read also; Hit by a solar storm, 40 SpaceX Starlink Satellites Fall to Earth
The Starlink satellite project aims to provide customers with high-speed internet access anywhere on Earth. Especially in underserved or very remote areas so that internet service is difficult to obtain.
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