SpaceX has simply set a brand new rocket-reuse document.
One of the corporate’s Falcon 9 rockets lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday (Dec. 4) at 5:13 a.m. EST (1013 GMT). The mission will ship 24 of SpaceX’s Starlink web satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO).
It was the twenty fourth launch for this Falcon 9’s first stage, in keeping with a SpaceX mission description. That will prime the outdated mark of 23 flights, which is held by three completely different boosters.
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The Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth for its twenty fourth touchdown about eight minutes after liftoff. It touched down vertically on the drone ship “A Shortfall of Gravitas,” which was stationed within the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket’s higher stage, in the meantime, continued on to deploy the 24 Starlink satellites in LEO.
Wednesday’s mission notched up yet one more milestone for SpaceX’s Falcon rocket household, which consists of the workhorse Falcon 9 and the extra highly effective Falcon Heavy. SpaceX has launched greater than 400 profitable Falcon 9 missions thus far and has landed Falcon first phases 377 instances.
Starlink is the most important satellite tv for pc constellation ever assembled. It presently consists of greater than 6,750 operational satellites, and that quantity is rising on a regular basis.
