SpaceX Launches 22 Starlink Satellites: Getting Closer to Global Coverage
Early this morning (Oct. 5), SpaceX sent 22 more of its Starlink internet satellites into orbit. This was the company’s 70th trip into orbit this year.
The Starlink spaceship took off tonight at 1:36 a.m. EDT (5:36 a.m. GMT) on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The rocket was supposed to take off on Wednesday at 10:45 p.m. EDT (2:45 a.m. GMT on October 5), but bad weather put the launch back several hours.
As expected, the first stage of the Falcon 9 came back to Earth and landed vertically in the ocean on the SpaceX drone ship.
A SpaceX flight report says that this was the eighth time this Falcon 9 first stage had taken off and landed. Four of the seven times it was launched before, Starlink batches were sent into space.
The 22 Starlink satellites will be sent into low Earth orbit (LEO) about 65 minutes after launch. They will be released from the Falcon 9’s upper stage.
SpaceX made its 70th orbital trip of the year 2023 this morning. Most of these launches were used to add satellites to the Starlink megaconstellation, which now has more than 4,800 working satellites.
This year, the Falcon 9 rocket has been used for 66 of SpaceX’s orbital flights. The powerful Falcon Heavy rocket has been used for the other three. But the second number is about to go up: On October 12, a Falcon Heavy will send the Psyche asteroid mission from NASA into space.
SpaceX also sent its new Starship deep-space transportation system on a test trip this year. That mission, which didn’t have a payload to send into orbit, stopped four minutes after launch when Starship ran into trouble.
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