SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites in nighttime liftoff (photos, video)
SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit early Wednesday morning (April 10).
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 23 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Wednesday at 1:40 a.m. EDT (0540 GMT).
About 8.5 minutes later, the rocket’s first stage came back to Earth, touching down at sea on the SpaceX droneship Just Read the Instructions.
Related: Starlink satellite train: How to see and track it in the night sky
It was the second launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Its lone previous liftoff sent SpaceX’s four-astronaut Crew-8 mission toward the International Space Station on March 5.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 21 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO). The spacecraft will be deployed in LEO 65.5 minutes after liftoff, if all goes according to plan.
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SpaceX has now launched 36 orbital missions in 2024. Two-thirds of those flights have been devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of nearly 5,700 operational satellites.