SpaceX launches 56 Starlink satellites, lands rocket at sea (video)
SpaceX successfully launched another batch of its Starlink satellites to space today.
SpaceX sent 56 Starlink satellites aloft at 11:35 a.m. ET (1535 GMT) atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, with the first stage coming down eight minutes later to make its eighth successful landing on a nearby drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean called Just Read The Instructions. The rocket's second stage then reached nominal orbital insertion nine minutes into flight.
The mission marked SpaceX's 43rd launch of the year, and 242 successful Falcon 9 flight to date, according to today's launch commentary from Atticus Vadera, a propulsion engineer at SpaceX.
Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky
This was the fourth Starlink mission for this particular booster, which has supported numerous other missions including a resupply mission to the International Space Station known as CRS-24 and numerous commercial satellite launches.
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SpaceX has sent more than 4,500 Starlink satellites to space already, and roughly 4,200 of them are operational, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
But SpaceX wants to keep growing the megaconstellation. The company has permission to send 12,000 of the broadband satellites to space and has applied for approval for another 30,000.
