The primary half of SpaceX’s St. Patrick’s Day doubleheader went nicely.
The corporate aced its 18th orbital mission of 2023 on Friday (March 17), launching 52 of its Starlink web satellites to orbit and touchdown a rocket on a ship at sea.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the broadband craft lifted off from California’s Vandenberg Area Power Base at 3:26 p.m. EDT (1926 GMT; 12:26 p.m. native California time).
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Just below 9 minutes later, the Falcon 9’s first stage got here again to Earth for a pinpoint landing on the SpaceX droneship Of Course I Nonetheless Love You, which was stationed within the Pacific Ocean. It was the eighth mission for this specific booster, SpaceX wrote in a mission description (opens in new tab).
The rocket’s higher stage, in the meantime, continued hauling the Starlink spacecraft to low Earth orbit, deploying all of them as deliberate about 15.5 minutes after liftoff, SpaceX confirmed via Twitter (opens in new tab).
The newly launched satellites are becoming a member of more than 3,700 operational spacecraft (opens in new tab) in SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation. And that quantity will proceed rising far into the longer term: SpaceX has approval to deploy 12,000 Starlink satellites and has utilized for permission for an additional 30,000 on prime of that.
SpaceX has yet one more mission on faucet at this time: One other Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the SES-18 and SES-19 telecommunications satellites to orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:38 p.m. EDT (2338 GMT).
You may watch it right here at Area.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company (opens in new tab). Protection is predicted to start about quarter-hour earlier than liftoff.
Mike Wall is the writer of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e-book in regards to the seek for alien life. Observe him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
