This is the ninth spacewalk for its first-stage booster, which previously launched two manned missions to the International Space Station.
On Thursday morning, rocket SpaceX Falcon 9 launches into space with its western payload. Launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 4:22 a.m. local time, Falcon 9 carried 56 Starlink internet satellites as part of its 17,400 kilogram payload.
This is the ninth spacewalk for its first-stage booster, which previously launched two manned missions to the International Space Station (ISS), as well as the missions CRS-22, Turksat 5B, CRS-25, Eutelsat Hotbird 13G, and mPower-a, and now two Starlink missions.
As usual, SpaceX is livestreaming the early stages of the flight on its YouTube channel. Here’s a video of the rocket departing from the launch site on Thursday:
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/nLJdSIiPZZ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 26, 2023
Reported from Digital Trends (27/1), nearly nine minutes after leaving the launch pad, the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster returned to Earth to make a perfect landing on a SpaceX drone ship, called Just Read the Instructions, which was waiting off the coast of Florida.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship pic.twitter.com/Es18PGOMsm
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 26, 2023
Delivering the booster on its ninth flight, and bringing it home safely, is a tribute to the SpaceX engineers who developed a system to reuse the first stage of the Falcon 9 booster. Such a process allows SpaceX to cut spaceflight costs while offering customers greater flight frequency. including NASA.
While nine flights may sound impressive, SpaceX has another booster on 15 missions to space. Upon return to Earth, the booster is taken away for inspection and repair before returning to the launchpad.
SpaceX is now preparing to deploy one of its Falcon 9 rockets for a manned flight in late February, its first mission since October 2022. Mission Crew-6 will send an international crew of four astronauts to the ISS on a Crew Dragon which, like the boosters, has been running several missions.
