A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took its twenty fourth flight on Wednesday, a report for the first-stage booster.
Lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:13 a.m. ET, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched 24 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. About eight minutes after launch, the rocket’s first stage carried out a flawless touchdown on a drone ship ready off the coast of Florida, paving the way in which for a twenty fifth flight as soon as it’s been checked over and refurbished.
Previous flights for the booster, listed by SpaceX as B1067, concerned the CRS-22, CRS-25, Crew 3, Crew 4, TelkomSat-113BT, Turksat-5B, Koreasat-6A, Eutelsat HOTBIRD-F2, Galileo L13, mPOWER-A, and PSN MFS missions, together with 13 Starlink mission deploying web satellites to low-Earth orbit. Before Wednesday’s record-breaking flight, B1067 final launched on November 11, whereas its first flight came about in June 2021.
Two different first-stage Falcon 9 boosters have taken 23 flights up to now, whereas many others have additionally taken a number of flights, so B1067 now leads the pack.
Reusing the rockets on this approach permits SpaceX to chop the price of area missions and function launches extra regularly, a setup that makes orbital missions reasonably priced for a better variety of firms and organizations than earlier than.
SpaceX first achieved an upright touchdown of a 41.2-meter-tall Falcon 9 first-stage booster in 2015, and following a number of mishaps throughout subsequent touchdown makes an attempt, it quickly managed to excellent the process.
SpaceX engineers at the moment are eyeing a a lot greater problem — bringing dwelling the significantly bigger Super Heavy booster, which varieties the primary stage of the Starship rocket. At 71 meters tall, it’s a lot tougher to land on the bottom, so the corporate added big mechanical “chopstick” arms to the launch tower that safe the booster because it returns to base, simply earlier than the automobile touches the bottom.
SpaceX achieved the feat in spectacular vogue on its first try throughout the rocket’s fifth take a look at flight in October, however it was unable to repeat the maneuver on its sixth take a look at final month. Still, with extra apply, SpaceX is anticipated to excellent the touchdown of the Super Heavy because it prepares the rocket for launches towards the moon, Mars, and past.
