SpaceX simply despatched one other batch of its Starlink broadband satellites into the ultimate frontier.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 19 Starlink craft lifted off from California’s foggy Vandenberg Space Force Base immediately (July 31) at 2:35 p.m. EDT (1835 GMT; 11:35 a.m. native California time).
The rocket’s first stage got here again to Earth as deliberate about 8.5 minutes later, touching down within the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship named “Of Course I Nonetheless Love You.”
It was the twenty seventh launch and touchdown for this explicit booster, which is designated 1071. That is simply two shy of the corporate’s reuse document, which was set earlier this month — and on the five hundredth total Falcon 9 launch, no much less.
Booster 1071’s earlier missions
The Falcon 9’s higher stage continued carrying the 19 Starlink satellites towards low Earth orbit. That is the place they will be deployed 63 minutes after launch, if all goes in keeping with plan.
They’re going to be part of the more than 8,000 different energetic satellites within the Starlink megaconstellation, the most important spacecraft assemblage ever constructed.
As we speak’s Starlink launch — the 94th Falcon 9 mission of the yr already — was imagined to be the second half of a spaceflight doubleheader. SpaceX tried to launch the Crew-11 astronaut mission to the Worldwide Area Station for NASA immediately however scrubbed the attempt with a couple of minute left on the countdown clock because of dangerous climate.