SpaceX's latest Falcon 9 Starlink mission vaulted away from Cape Canaveral late Wednesday

Late Wednesday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 carried more Starlink internet satellites to orbit after lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 11:36 p.m. EDT.

The 230-foot rocket vaulted away from Launch Complex 40 on a southeasterly trajectory over the Atlantic Ocean, skirting between the Florida coast and the Bahamas.

The rocket's first stage, which flew its 13th mission to date, completed an ocean landing aboard the Shortfall of Gravitas drone ship about eight minutes after liftoff.

What was the payload?

The mission, dubbed Starlink 6-10, marked the 42nd launch of the year from the Space Coast and carried 22 more of the internet-beaming satellites to orbit, helping to fill out SpaceX's near globally spanning constellation.

All told, the company has sent more than 5,000 of the flat-packed satellites to orbit since 2019.

Starlink internet service starts at $120 for residential customers after an initial $599 hardware fee and is available for a wide range of applications stretching from in-flight services aboard airplanes to providing connectivity to remote and hard-to-reach destinations around the world.

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When's the next launch?

The next Falcon 9 slated for liftoff from Florida will send NASA's SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Targeted for liftoff at 3:49 a.m. EDT, Friday, Aug. 25, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov will fly aboard SpaceX's Endurance Dragon capsule to the space station for the six-month science mission.

Before then, SpaceX could schedule another Falcon 9 Starlink mission from the Cape, but no specific launch dates have been released.

For the latest, visit floridatoday.com/launchschedule.

Contact Jamie Groh at JGroh@floridatoday.com and follow her on X.com at @AlteredJamie.

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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: SpaceX launch sends more Starlink satellites to orbit late Wednesday