A group of Starlink satellites sweep across the sky in Uruguay, Feb. 7, 2021, captured by a slow-speed camera. “SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched more Starlink Internet satellites into orbit early Thursday (March 11). This is the company’s seventh successful mission launch of its kind this year.
“The Falcon 9 booster rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 3:13 a.m. EST.
Less than nine minutes later, the rocket’s reusable, 15-story-tall first stage booster landed back on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean for the next launch, as usual.
The platform is about 400 miles downstream in the Atlantic Ocean.
The liftoff was the company’s seventh mission of its kind this year, the 21st Time it has sent 60 Starlink satellites into space together, the 110th flight of the Falcon 9 rocket and SpaceX’s 76th booster landing to date.
According to Space.com, the launch was initially scheduled for March 9, but the launch was postponed to allow SpaceX to do more pre-launch testing.
The Starlink satellite was deployed nearly an hour after the Falcon 9 launch.
“Starlink is a next-generation satellite network designed to provide broadband Internet access to people around the world. The project was launched in February 2018. In the first phase of the network, about 12,000 satellites are planned to be launched. So far, SpaceX has launched more than 1,200 Starlink satellites.
The company plans to launch tens of thousands more satellites to build the coverage, network capacity and speed needed to make the project a reality.
In a Feb. 22 tweet, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the constellation of satellites will aggressively cover most of the planet by 2021 and complete global coverage by 2022.
Earlier this year, SpaceX opened access to the satellites to the public in its current or planned service areas using a pre-order reservation system.
Another Starlink mission is expected to launch as soon as this weekend, and SpaceX plans to complete at least two more such missions by the end of the month, Spaceflight Now reported.
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