Crazy Musk, crazy SpaceX, continue to run wild towards the future!
On March 14, a nine-handed Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX flew from Launch Pad 39A of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, successfully sending the 22nd batch of 60 Starlink satellites into space, continuing to set a new record for human rocket reuse.
The so-called nine-handed rocket is the rocket has previously carried out eight launch missions, and this is its ninth flight.
The battle-hardened Falcon 9, numbered B1051, made its first launch in March 2019 on the first unmanned test mission to send a manned Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. B1051 has since gone on to perform seven more launches, and the chart below summarizes its first eight missions.
More than eight minutes after this launch, the rocket’s first stage was successfully recovered again and landed smoothly on the Of Course I Still Love You unmanned recovery ship in the Atlantic Ocean, just one step away from the Falcon 9’s goal of 10 reuse missions.
Not surprisingly, we’ll see the 10-handed rocket shine in the next month or two. Yes, Musk is about to make good on his bragging rights once again!
At the Time, Musk proposed rocket reuse technology was questionable, now has long been a large real incense scene. In fact, the Falcon 9 reuse 10 times is still only a small goal of SpaceX, which is achieved with almost no correction. If after a larger correction, Falcon 9 may be able to reuse 100 times.
A little more than an hour after this launch, the star-arrow separation was successful, followed by the completion of the satellite deployment. At this point, SpaceX has launched a total of 1,325 Starlink satellites into space, taking the ambitious Starlink program one step closer to full commercialization.
The Starlink program is an ambitious plan by SpaceX to provide high-speed Internet access with a fleet of satellites in near-Earth orbit, mainly for people in remote areas, and is a good complement to the existing ground-based Internet.
The Starlink program is currently in public beta testing and has already covered the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and New Zealand. Users only need to install a flying saucer-shaped antenna to receive the Starlink signal and enjoy Starlink WiFi, and it seems to work pretty well.
SpaceX expects to launch full commercial service for the Starlink program later this year and is now taking reservations.
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