A brand new group of Starlink satellites are circling the Earth after an early Saturday morning (July 26) launch from Florida.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 5:01 a.m. EDT (0901 GMT) from Area Launch Advanced 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The booster’s higher stage reached a preliminary orbit about 9 minutes after leaving the bottom.
The 28 broadband web satellites (group 10-26) had been launched into low Earth orbit about an hour into the flight.
“Deployment of 28 Starlink satellites confirmed,” SpaceX confirmed on the social media community X.
The launch is the primary of two Starlink missions deliberate for the day. SpaceX has scheduled a second launch with 24 satellites from Vandenberg Area Drive Base in California at 8:55 p.m. PDT native (11:55 p.m. EDT or 0355 GMT on July 27).
As deliberate, the Falcon 9’s first stage separated from the higher stage at about 2 minutes into the ascent after which carried out a propulsive return to Earth, firing one in all its engines to land on “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” an autonomous droneship stationed within the Atlantis Ocean. The booster (B1078) accomplished its twenty second flight.
The launch got here two days after the Starlink community skilled a 2.5-hour outage, affecting prospects throughout the globe. The issue was traced again to a “failure of key inner software program providers that function the core community,” based on an update posted to the Starlink account on the X social media community.
“The community problem has been resolved, and Starlink service has been restored. We perceive how necessary connectivity is and apologize for the disruption,” SpaceX officers wrote.
Saturday’s launch raised the overall of active Starlink satellites in orbit previous 8,000. SpaceX is presently licensed to deploy 12,000 of the relay models.